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Growing in gentleness

Elizabeth Foss

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Is it just me or has the world become even angrier than it was two years ago? Is it possible that this Lent is marked by more darkness than that one? I’m working some spring cleaning into my Lenten routine, and I’ve been pondering this anger as I work. More specifically, I’m thinking about women who just seem so mad. How are we to respond to another woman’s fury?

With gentleness.

We are called to gentleness. Of course, women have always been called to gentleness (and so have men, for that matter), but now the call seems urgent. I suspect that it seemed rather urgent in the ’60s and ’70s too, and perhaps too few women answered that call. See Carrie Gress’ excellent book, “The Anti-Mary Exposed,” for excellent insight into how we got here.

The world needs gentleness.

My Gospel meditation on the day I was thinking hard about anger was Matthew 11:28-30. Jesus says:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition).

I have always loved these verses, but also I’ve always zeroed in on what I must be doing wrong. To me, the verses always said that if life felt heavy and the yoke was chafing, I’d taken on the wrong burden, and I needed to work harder at figuring out what Christ really wanted me to carry. That morning, folding laundry in a steamy bathroom that houses my washer and dryer, I saw it differently.

I wear a brown scapular. It’s a beautiful scapular, but it’s rather large and somewhat bulky as scapulars go. That morning, it was slipping all over under my shirt. I was sweaty and it itched. It distracted me from thinking about gentleness and this Gospel.

And then it illuminated the whole thing.

I struggle with gentleness when I am unsettled, when I am fatigued, when I am fearful. Those are the times I need most to be quiet with God. God is not irritated when I’m unsettled. He’s gentle. He can be relied upon to meet me with tender gentleness. And it’s that gentleness that brings rest. If I can put myself in the presence of the gentle Jesus and ask him to impart to me his gentleness, I’m no longer trying to wrestle gentleness out of my sinfulness.

If I look at that scapular differently — if I see it as Jesus’ yoke — it becomes a daily reminder to put on Christ. When I put on his yoke, his gentleness, I can put on his demeanor.

Gentleness springs from compassion (compassion means to suffer with). Where we enter into someone else’s suffering, there is tenderness and human kindness. Gentleness crowds out anger. Even if we are sharing in their suffering and righteously angered at miscarriages of justice, anger must be tempered with understanding and tenderness and human kindness in order to bring about change that is loving. Unbridled anger brings destruction. I think we’ve seen that throughout history.

Gentleness is rooted in humility. It is open-hearted and it maintains a posture that begs to understand the other. Humility yields. It is receptive. Instead of ire, we have gentleness. Instead of division, we have true understanding.

If uncontrolled anger is a vice (and it is), gentleness rooted in humility is the virtue. Gentleness takes the ire that is provoked and unleashed by pride and hatred, and it restrains it with prudence and kindness.

“Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom” (Js 3:13).

I think these are my marching orders for the foreseeable future. This is what I want my life to look like. Wisdom is incarnate in the humble, gentle Jesus. He calls us to be gentle and meek in order that the spirit can dwell in us and work through us. Pride and anger get in the way of that plan. Gentleness is strong. Meekness is not weak timidity. It is having the strength of will and the fortitude to surrender entirely to Christ.

Foss, whose website is takeupandread.org, writes from Connecticut.

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