Light, Life, and Love: Selections from the German Mystics of the Middle Ages · Chapter 20On Gentleness
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FROM this patience are born gentleness and kindness, for no one can be gentle under adversity if not the patient man. Gentleness creates in man peace and repose from everything; for the gentle man endures insulting words and gestures, and bad faces and bad deeds, and all manner of injustice towards his friends and himself, and he is content with all, for gentleness is suffering in repose. Thanks to gentleness, the force of anger remains immovable in its tranquillity, the force of desire lifts itself up towards the virtues, and the reason rejoices, and the conscience dwells in peace, for the other mortal sins, such as anger and rage, are removed far from her. For the Spirit of God reposes in a gentle and humble heart, as Christ saith, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth"—that is to say, their own nature and the things of earth in meekness, and, after this life, the things of eternity.