My dear friends, I write to you once more concerning these proclamations of
blessedness that we have received, which I have meditated on day and night and
put daily into effect in my life because they concern the existing realities of
our spiritual essence to which my soul is awakened to the conformity of the
Light of Christ, in whom was life and that life was the light of all men [Jn
I:4]. Of these beatitudes, the attitude of those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness has taken me on a spiritual odyssey which I have no doubt
has changed my life for good because in developing the desire to do the Will of
my Father Who sent me, I have discovered the manifold wisdom and richness of
the fulfillment of every saint in life or in eternity to which I have been called
to proclaim of its goodness with every breath of life in me.
Before I go on with my analogy of the great King David on
this beatitude, permit me to share a little testimony with you of the living
power of this heroic attitude in my life. You see, there is a hunger in my soul
that I have been unable to fill; a thirst in my heart which nothing in the
world, not even the rivers of love, had been able to quench. I have gone back
and forth to find something that will fill the restlessness of living without purpose
and without acceptance of the consequences of the choices I had made in life. I fell
deeper into despair and all I ever wanted to do was to be happy, regardless of
the cost of that happiness. All I wanted was to do the whimsical will of my every
emotion, which was to find an easy path out of misery and living brokenhearted.
In those moments of darkness, I did what real men do, and it wasn’t just going
down on my knees, but trying to take control of my life. I took responsibility
for my choices and became very disciplined with my goals yet these things did
not fill me. These things did not make much meaning to me because although
everything was going on in the manner I had planned, nothing seemed to satisfy
the desires of my inner being. In those moments when I sought to understand the
seemingly meek calmness of meditation, I discovered that spirituality is the nature of
reality and I put all my will and energy into trying to understand the
spiritual nature of life. It was in these moments God sent me a miracle and
moved one of his children to show me a path to the understanding of the
spirit of the Sons [Children] of God, and I can say without any
excitement-of-the-moment that those principles are practicable. By striving daily
to be more spirit conscious, I came to the reality that out of the void of my
soul now flows a fountain of living water and there is no way I would walk
again as one who is not born of God.
Do you remember the qualities of the man that was after God’s
heart? Of how God loved him above many who were before him because of his
intense desire and hunger for righteousness? I do not wish to give you a long
read on this beatitude but allow me to quote some poetry from this great
superior king I love so much to give you an idea of how hungry and thirsty he
was. “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my
God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with
God?” [Ps XL:1-2]. The common meaning of righteousness is to be morally
right or virtuous, I understand now that it means more. It means to do the Will
of God and in all the years of the great King David’s existence, he says “yet I
have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread” [cf. Ps
XXXVII:25]. Righteousness, the desire to do the will of God, is the character
of Kings. When a man desires to do nothing short of what God Wills for him to
do he upholds the law of humanity and lives as though all of his acts are
divine and he is himself becoming a universal law. I assure you that such a man
is fulfilled and you can see the blessedness of his soul in his desire. Do you
remember I told you that what David did, his descendant perfected? This is how
our Lord embodied this desire to do the will of God: “For I have come down from heaven
not to do my will but to do the Will of Him who sent me [Jn VI:38]. My
dear friends it is the Will of Jesus and his very life that was the fulfillment
of David’s desire to love God. Jesus was the descendant King David saw in his
spirit that made him acclaim that he has received the law of humanity. If
we live out this attitude to seek God and do what he wants us to, we will like
David feel the very same universal law in our spirits: we will feel Christ in
us perfecting all things. Selah!
The blessed fulfillment of those who live this beatitude, as our
Lord described, is quintessentially in their attitude towards righteousness.
They hunger
and they thirst with a supernatural desire to do the will of God. As
eating and drinking are the only way living organisms get satisfaction, so also
a strong hunger and thirst [in fact an obsessed desire] for
God’s will is necessary for a spiritual being to be find fulfillment in life
because man, above all living organisms, is a spiritual being regardless of his
acceptance of this reality or not. St. Augustine better describes this desire
of the soul for God when he said “my soul remains restless until it rests in
God”. Everyday our Lord performs the miracle of filling the hunger and thirst of those who come to him in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar. If I didn’t have the strong desire, I mean if I wasn’t restless
enough to desire God in the depths of my soul, I would have never gotten the fulfillment that God sent someone to show me how properly I ought to live as He
would want me to. It is my prayer that as we desire so strongly in our heart to
do the will of God, He would send us a miracle that would redefine our spirits
and fill us to that point where we become a spring of living water flowing into
the world around us.
“O
the blessedness of those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness, for they will
be filled”. [Matt
V:6]
Comments
Post a Comment