I could have killed you!
That was Israel’s great warrior and future king, David, yelling from a hilltop across the valley at King Saul. After David defeated the giant Goliath and went on a string of military victories, King Saul, the main beneficiary of David’s success, became jealous and wanted David dead.
Despite all this, David remained loyal to his king. But he did not take the injustice lying down. Instead, David headed for the hills and waged a guerilla war against Saul’s large and powerful army. As a young man, David had been a shepherd in those hills. Knowing the terrain gave him the home-field advantage to easily outmaneuver his enemies.
In chapter 24 of Samuel, by strange chance, Saul and David ended up taking cover in the same mountain-side cave. David, coming upon a sleeping Saul, could have easily killed him. After cutting off a piece of Saul’s robe, he snuck away, and from the opposite slope across the valley, holding up the piece of robe, he yelled: “I could have killed you!”
In chapter 26, recounted in last Sunday’s reading, David snuck into Saul’s camp and once again found Saul sleeping, with his spear by his head. After slipping away, David once again yelled from across the valley: “Here is the king’s spear! Come and get it!”
They skipped a couple of good lines in that passage. They left out the part where David taunted King Saul’s bodyguard. David yelled up at him: “Are you not a man? We could have killed the king. Why didn’t you guard him? As the Lord lives all of you must surely die for not guarding the Lord’s anointed!”
Now, the psalm states: “Lord, remember David in all his meekness” (Ps. 131). After reading about David’s exploits in the Judean hills, many would find it hard to label him as meek. But that’s because they don’t know what the word means.
The late Jesuit Father John Hardon defined meekness as “the virtue that moderates anger and its disorderly effects.” Meekness controls “resentment at another person’s character or behavior.”
Christ told us to turn the other cheek. However, the night before Christ died, the high priest’s attendant struck Christ in the face. But Christ did not turn the other cheek. Instead, He just stared at the man and asked the poor fool a question he could not answer.
To turn the other cheek, according to St Thomas Aquinas, is not a literal command from Christ. Instead, it means to possess the interior disposition, the self-control that allows us to tolerate the injustice that comes our way. “Learn from me,” Christ preached, “for I am meek and humble of heart.” Meekness then is the emulation of Christ who surrendered Himself over to death in order to save us. Meekness is not weakness.
Nor is it effeminacy.
Aquinas defined the effeminate man as one who is “ready to forsake a good on account of difficulties which he cannot endure.” A modern scholar states that the effeminate man refuses to detach himself from pleasures in order to prevent the pain of pursuing something greater than himself. As they say, “No pain, no gain.” All of us then—male and female, masculine and feminine—are called to be meek, not effeminate.
Yet a soul-destroying ideology, out to destroy the family and marriage and human nature itself, has slithered its way into our western culture. It sells the poison that one’s God-given sex is merely a social construct, obliterating healthy masculinity and femininity. Utterly confusing sexual roles, it turns softened men and hardened women into competitors, instead of what they were made to be—partners.
On New Year’s Eve, 2015, there were 1200 sexual assaults by migrants in Cologne, Germany. 1200 assaults by 2000 migrants in one night in one city. These were perpetrated by migrant men of military age wearing nice clothing and possessing cell phones.
Now, here is a good question: Where were the German men throughout all this? How is it their own wives, daughters, and sisters were so brazenly assaulted—in their own city, on their home field? Where were the native German men of military age to stop this?
A professor noted in a piece titled “Christianity’s Masculinity Crisis” how a few hundred men in Amsterdam, in order to show solidarity with the New Year’s Eve assault victims in Germany, marched through the streets . . . wearing short skirts. The professor wrote:
Unless you have a graduate degree in gender studies, you’ll realize that the short skirts parade is an inadequate response to what happened in Cologne. It doesn’t send the message “we mean business;” instead, it sends the message “you don’t need to take us seriously.” Indeed, such a confused and feeble gesture only serves to further embolden those men who already think of infidel women as “easy marks.”
Here, the professor wrote, is what brings on a national security threat. If there ever was a time when males in Western societies needed to be unconfused about their gender, this is it:
We’re surrounded by enemies and potential enemies who are unapologetic about their gender identity and are quite prepared to rule over those weaker cultures that prefer appeasement to confrontation.
My friends, loving your enemies does not mean pretending they are your friends. And note that Christ never said: “Blessed are the pacifists.” Rather, He said “Blessed are the peacemakers.” King David made peace by conducting a guerrilla war in the hills of Judea. He did so while remaining meek—for he displayed the proper interior disposition when confronted with injustice. He perfectly balanced the virtues of meekness and fortitude displayed in his authentic masculinity.
Also recall that King David was just a shadow, a figure for the real king, Jesus Christ. And we are the main beneficiary of Christ’s death march up to a hill in Judea called Calvary, where He perfectly balances meekness and fortitude on the wooden beams of His cross.
This sacred mystery, where He dies, so we can live, is made present at every Sacrifice of Mass.
This most masculine action of Christ is what gives our temporary life on earth meaning. When one understands this, he asks himself, “What else is there to do but live and die for Christ?” Indeed. What else is there?
Listen to the Son of David, your Warrior-King, and the Prince of Peace at Holy Mass. In the silence listen to Him because time is running out, and He means business. Hear Him from the hilltop of Calvary. Hear Him tell you: I could have killed you!—Instead, I saved you. I saved you by telling my Father to forgive you. Now, here is your cross! Come and get it!—Or are you not a man?
My friends, do not forsake the good on account of difficulties you do not wish to endure. Instead, for the sake of the One who saved you, detach yourself from pleasures and endure pain. Do that, and pursue the something greater that is everlasting life with Christ.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
