Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that he is “meek and humble of heart.” Yet just a few lines before this, he says that he is equal to his Father, the almighty God. So how can the Son of God be both meek and mighty?
Jesus’ meekness meant doing the will of God completely. The challenge for us comes in his words, “learn from me.” We must learn to do God’s will as completely as Jesus did.
First, to be complete means we do all that God wants from us. We cannot pick and choose what we want to do and what we want to ignore. For example, we may reserve the right to decide which teachings of the Church we will follow. But doing God’s will completely means doing it without reservation.
Second, we may try to do all that God asks, but give up if something becomes too difficult. We may say we forgive someone, for example, but when they reject that forgiveness, we become even angrier. We can learn from Jesus how to do each part of God’s will to completion, as Jesus did all the way to the cross.
Tom Schmidt, Diocesan Publications