Here is a riddle I would have for you. How it is that Jesus in the Beatitudes simultaneously valorizes meekness or gentleness, desiring righteousness, and being a peacemaker. A person who sought to be righteous and meek would be kind to everyone and do no one any wrong, but they would not seek to bring peace where there is discord and hatred. A person who sought to be righteous and peacemaker would try to instigate a peace, but with the heavy hand that tears down resistance in their path. A meek peacemaker would just go along with whoever has control without concern for what is truly righteous. It is easy to bring two of these ‘virtues’ together, but it is not easy to bring all three together.
Herein lies the mastery and challenge of Jesus’ beatitudes: what Jesus commends in one beatitude is often held in tension with the other beatitudes, not just between gentleness, righteousness, and shalom-making. There is something formative about trying to live out and understand paradoxes and tensions. Zen Buddhism uses paradoxes to bring about a greater understand of the truth. Jesus differs in that the tensions of His instructions are more subtle and only experienced and understood by those who seek to put into practice his words, and not necessarily accessible to distanced, cognitive thinking, as they are rooted in the tensions that come in seeking to live faithfully before God. If you haven’t experience the tensions and paradoxes of Jesus’ ethical instructions, such as the initial struggle that can occur when one seeks to live wholly with grace and with truth, then that means you need more time to submit and surrender yourself to Jesus’ instructions.
Furthermore, don’t expect people who haven’t experience the tensions and paradoxes to understand and perceive it, because they are still caught up in a primarily rationalistic mind frame that is much like a person who claims a mastery of love and yet fails miserably at relationships when love is important. The rationalism trains us to put people into the boxes that are our abstractions have labeled. This is perhaps part of why the Beatitudes also warns about persecution and the worst culprits were Pharisees, as there exist some people whose needs for status and acclaim is so great that when they can not fit you into a specific box built of their own rational reflection to fit into the world crafted of their own greatness and yet can truly find no horrible blemishes will engage in an act of cognitive dissonance to exaggerate and confabulate so as keep a person in line and preserve their own sense of greatness, even when that person they hold with derision speaks with gentleness and righteousness and seeks peace.
So, how can you combine all three of those virtues? Perhaps by a persistent, stubbornness in seeking what is righteous that seeks no unfairness upon anyone and honors those who deserve honor, hears and learns from those whose words and actions combined evident some degree of truth and consistency, can be patient, but does not stay silent, uses their voice to speak that matches the gravity of the situation, does not wait forever, learns to be innocently shrewd as it is necessary, and bows down to no one but to God in heaven. At least, this is how I have sought to try to embody the Beatitudes in my life, but I would be open to anyone who has a good word of guidance on this matter.