Defining Meekness and Humility

'For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.'  Although it is difficult to define meekness and humility let us ruminate what its essence. Pope Francis once said “Let us always remain meek and humble, that we might defeat the empty promises and the hatred of the world.” 

According to Thomas Aquinas, a philosopher. Meekness, in so far as it restrains the onslaught of anger, concurs with clemency towards the same effect. It properly mitigates the passion of anger, the vice of anger, which denotes excess in the passion of anger. Meekness, likewise, moderates anger according to right reason, wherefore it is manifest that meekness is a virtue.

The word humility signifies lowliness or submissiveness and it is derived from the Latin humilitas or, as Aquinas says, from humus, i.e. the earth which is beneath us. humility is understood also in the sense of afflictions or miseries, which may be inflicted by external agents, as when a man humiliates another by causing him pain or suffering. Humility is a repressing or moderating virtue opposed to pride and vainglory or that spirit within us which urges us to great things above our strength and ability, and therefore it is included in temperance just as meekness which represses anger is a part of the same virtue. 

Humility is the first virtue inasmuch as it removes the obstacles to faith — per modum removens prohibens, as Aquinas says. It removes pride and makes a man subject to and a fit recipient of grace according to the words of St. James: "God resisteth the proud, and giveth his grace to the humble" (James 4:6).

Thomas Aquinas explains (Contra Gent., bk, III, 135): "The spontaneous embracing of humiliations is a practice of humility not in any and every case but when it is done for a needful purpose: for humility being a virtue, does nothing indiscreetly. It is then not humility but folly to embrace any and every humiliation: but when virtue calls for a thing to be done it belongs to humility not to shrink from doing it, for instance not to refuse some mean service where charity calls upon you to help your neighbours. Sometimes too, even where our own duty does not require us to embrace humiliations, it is an act of virtue to take them up in order to encourage others by our example more easily to bear what is incumbent on them: for a general will sometimes do the office of a common soldier to encourage the rest. Sometimes again we may make a virtuous use of humiliations as a medicine. Thus if anyone's mind is prone to undue self-exaltation, he may with advantage make a moderate use of humiliations, either self-imposed, or imposed by others, so as to check the elation of his spirit by putting himself on a level with the lowest class of the community in the doing of mean offices."

I have read a masterpiece of Fr. Dimitru Staniloae, a Romanian theologian in his 'Patience with Hope Leads to Meekness and Humility' stated:

As we practice patience and are able to endure our troubles with Hope, we will find that we begin to develop humility and meekness. Meekness is a firm disposition of the mind  and is unaffected either by honors or insults.  It means to be unaffected by the disappointments which your neighbor has caused you and to pray sincerely for him.  It is the rock that arises above the sea of anger.

Meekness is not a weakness as many tend to think. It is a positive force aimed at the healing of hate. It is the meek person who is able to put himself into the shoes of others and to clearly see their point of view and understand their situation.  With meekness one is able to take into consideration many dimensions of a situation.  One who is meek has actions that are congruous with his thoughts. 

Humility is the opposite of pride.

Fr. Dimitru Staniloae defines humility as follows:

Humility is the supreme consciousness and living both of the divine infinity and our own littleness. It is at the same time the consciousness that the divine infinity pierces everything and everybody around us... As long as there is a trace of pride in us, we lack the thrill of contact with God; we lack the profound consciousness of a deeper relationship with God, and neither do we make others feel it. Only the humble lives in the immeasurable depths, full of mystery, in God. The humble person, far from becoming poor, embraces the infinite more than anybody else and offers it to others.

If he only accepts this role of being nothing but a reflector and a receiver of divine light, he has a tremendous destiny: that of living with the infinite. If he is ashamed of this role and is filled with his own smoke, he can no longer see anything even in himself.

St. Paul urges the peoples saying 'cum omni humilitate et mansuetudine cum patientia subportantes invicem in caritate' (Ephesians 4:2).

References:

Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas

Patience with Hope Leads to Meekness and Humility; Fr. Dimitru Staniloae