How the Meek will inherit the Earth, even in this life
Our Lord's promise in the beatitude does not only pertain to the next life. It pertains to the spiritual possession of all things, even in this life.
Our Lord’s promise in the beatitude does not only pertain to the next life. It pertains to the spiritual possession of all things, even in this life.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How the meek receive from God what they refuse to seize by force, or cling to out of natural attachments
That divine providence governs the world by exalting the humble and casting down the proud.
Why meekness alone allows men truly to inherit and understand God’s creation.
He shows us that the meek inherit the earth because they see God’s hand in all things, trust in his providence – and receive as sons what others vainly struggle to grasp for themselves.
For more information on this mini-series, see Part I.
The Meek possessing the Land
The Preaching of the Beatitudes
Chapter XIII
St. Matt. v. 4; Story of the Gospels, § 31
Burns and Oates, London, 1876.
Meekness mini-series contents:
Promise of providential aid to the meek
Our Lord’s words may be understood as a promise that the meek shall have that blessing and protection from God’s Providence, which is so constantly mentioned in its successive verses.
God will take care that they shall have the inheritance that is theirs, which they abandon to His protection, contenting themselves with the quiet observance of His law, without any attempt to vindicate themselves, to claim their right, or oppose the wicked and the oppressor with their own weapons.
What belongs to them by virtue of God’s promise will come to them by His Providence, though they do not strike a blow for it. David himself is the great historical example of the fulfilment of his own words, for the kingdom became his though he would use no violence to win it. The meek are of all others the persons to act in this way, and the promise therefore specially falls to them.
In this sense we may understand our Lord’s words as referring to a law of God’s Providence, which is carried out even as to temporal goods in the case of the meek, unless there be some higher law to operate in particular cases, the working of which puts them in a better and loftier position than the allotment of temporal goods.
The rules of God’s government
There are some such laws mentioned in Holy Scripture, as for instance that which promises long life to those who are dutiful to their parents, or that which St. Peter quotes from the Psalms: ‘He that will love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile,’1 and the rest, or again the promise of special deliverance in the evil day to the man ‘that understandeth concerning the needy and the poor’.2
These blessings are rules of God’s government of the world, and though the temporal benefits which they promise may often be superseded by spiritual favours which are far more precious, it may still remain the method of God’s action to bless the dutiful, or those who guard their tongue, or those who are merciful to the poor and afflicted of every kind, in the face of the whole world, in order to make known His regard for the virtues which are thus practised, while on the other hand He constantly visits the undutiful, or the unmerciful, or men of a bad tongue, with temporal punishment as well as with eternal.
St. Chrysostom’s interpretation – Abraham and David
We find that this interpretation of our Lord’s words is adopted, with his characteristic simplicity and directness, by the great St. Chrysostom, who illustrates it by the example of Abraham, who was so meek that he would bear no contention between his own herdsmen and those of Lot, to whom accordingly he gave the choice in which part of the land of Canaan he would dwell.
And then when Abraham had made this sacrifice for the sake of peace, we are told that God bade him lift up his eyes and look from the place whereon he then was, to the north and to the south and to the east and to the west; ‘all the land that thou seest, I will give to thee and to thy seed for ever’.3 Thus what he gave up by meekness he received as an inheritance as a reward of his meekness.
This then is a general law, as our Lord implies, in the kingdom of God, and the meek are blessed, because it secures them abundantly, fully, permanently, and from God Himself, what they are not willing to contend for among men. The principle is expressed in the Psalm, from which our Lord takes His words, with reference to the temporal possession of the promised Land, exactly as if the case of Abraham had been in the mind of David, and because such was the language which befitted the time of the old Covenant.
But the promise of God and the enforcement of that principle of His government to which allusion is here made, cannot be limited in operation to temporal benefits alone. Or rather, perhaps, it should be said, that promise and that principle, as far as they regard temporal possessions and the inheritance of the earth, rest upon features in God’s character as it is revealed to us, which have far higher and more spiritual effects in His dealings with His creatures.
Our Blessed Lady dwells upon this among other numerous characteristics of God, in the Magnificat, when she says, ‘He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble’.
He requires meekness, submissiveness, humility, in those to whom He grants the possession of the infinite treasures of different orders which He has thrown open to His creatures. He has from the very beginning given the inheritance to the meek, and will do so until the end.
The fallen angels fell through pride, the angels who were confirmed in grace and made heirs and possessors of heaven, won their crowns through meekness. So it has been in the history of man, in the election and rejection of nations for empire, in the choice God has made of those whom He has specially favoured or reprobated in whatever order. The proud are always cast down, the meek receive the inheritance.
Enjoyment of the physical world
Before passing on to the more spiritual instance of the working of the law, which have suggested the interpretation put on these words of our Lord by the majority of commentators, it may be well to consider how large is the range of meaning in which they may be taken almost literally.
The earth is given by God to man as his inheritance, and this may well be understood of all that is so given, life and all its circumstances and conditions, fraught with a number of blessings and benefits which address themselves to his various needs and to the different parts of his nature, physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual.
It may be said that those alone inherit this life, who enjoy it, understand it, profit by it, gather from it the instruction and help and blessings of various kinds which the great Father of all intends for His children.
There are, for instance, savage nations in occupation of some of the fairest and wealthiest regions of the earth, who may be said to dwell in them without inheriting them. The civilized traveller from a country less blessed by nature can see and understand the resources of the land, which are unknown to its occupants.
The soil is fertile and rich, there are streams to turn a thousand mills, pastures on which flocks without number may be fed, plains which may yield exhaustless crops of corn and maize, the climate is so fostering and genial that the vine, the olive, the palm, the fig may flourish there, along with the richest spices and most delicious fruits of the most favoured islands of the East.
The mountains are full of metallic treasures, and forests and quarries are there to supply all the wants of architecture and commerce, while the coast is rich in natural harbours, and the land lies in such a position on the face of the globe with reference to other countries as to ensure to its inhabitants prosperity, importance, and even empire, if its resources were developed, which the few ignorant tribes which range over its face are utterly unable to unlock.
Such a people may be said to occupy, but not to possess or inherit the home which God has given them, because they have not the intelligence to know what the gift is, or the energy to turn it to account.
Meekness and intellectual enjoyment
If this be true as to the natural blessings which are on every side of us, in regard to the use which may be made of them for the purposes of our natural life and social or political well-being, it is surely true also of the world and condition in which God has placed us, the circumstances around us, the opportunities we have of improvement, instruction, and the practice of virtue, with regard to the higher ends of our being.
Men of the most cultivated intellect, and who study most industriously even the physical world in all its wonderful arrangement and harmony, may yet, as is shown by example every day, altogether miss the lesson which God has written therein for man to learn, and be deaf and blind to its eloquent witness to Himself, His goodness, power, and majesty.
The reason why they do not hear what is ringing in their ears and do not see what is held up before their eyes, is the want of meekness of intellect.
Meanwhile, men of simple humble minds read all these lessons without effort, and thus seeing God as He means them to see Him in the works of His hands, they inherit the earth with a possession of which others are deprived.
Meekness mini-series contents:
From:
The Preaching of the Beatitudes
Further Reading:
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1 St. Peter iii. 10, 11, from Psalm xxxiii. 13.
Psalm xl. (xli.)
Gen. xiii. 14, 15.