Blessed are the Gentle

+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
7 Mar 2010

It is now old news that Mary MacKillop will be canonized by Pope Benedict on next October 17th.

We know the outlines of her story, of the order of sisters she founded, of the fact she was excommunicated by one bishop and expelled from Adelaide by another.  She was no push-over, a strong woman of faith in every sense.  But she was always courteous and forgiving.

I believe she is an outstanding Australian example of Jesus' second beatitude: "Blessed are the gentle, for they shall have the earth as inheritance".

Often "gentle" has been translated in English as "meek", but meekness can seem very like timidity.  Our Lord was not recommending that we compromise our principles and bow to superior force.  Christians are not encouraged to be door mats and are called to resist evil.

Pagans, ancient or modern, believe that life means the poor are crushed as the strong triumph.  This is the law of the jungle where only the fittest survive.  Social Darwinism applies the theory to human life.  Such people only pay lip service to social justice and don't believe in wasting money on the battlers.

Christians reject this and believe the prosperous through their taxes and generosity should help and protect the weak.  These are examples of gentleness, which is attractive, one of the fruits of the Spirit.

Christ also promised that the gentle will inherit the earth, which most of his Jewish listeners would have interpreted as the Promised Land.  This was extraordinary, because the country was ruled then by Herod, a puppet of the Romans.  Jesus was disavowing both the Romans and the violent Jewish Zealots, who would soon fight a terrible war which saw the destruction of Jerusalem.

Paul universalized this promise of inheriting the earth and we now understand it as the new heaven and the new earth at the end of time, when love and justice will reign, not violence and vanity.

Christ was not a weak man, but a leader who sometimes spoke very bluntly, but he asked us to imitate his gentleness of heart.  He did not trim his message to suit the times and was crucified for it.

But he did not answer violence with violence, suffered with dignity and prayed for his persecutors.

Mary MacKillop's problems were different and not as extreme, but she too was unfailingly gentle with her persecutors.