In the Beatitudes, St. Matthew records Jesus saying, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (5:6). But Luke has Jesus saying only, “Blessed are you who hunger and thirst” (6:21). Why is this? Is Luke asserting that Jesus taught that it is enough for someone to be physically hungry or thirsty for them to be blessed?
Jesus himself rejects this view when he tells the crowds, “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you” (John 6:27). Jesus is praising them for seeking not bodily food, but rather spiritual food, and especially the Eucharist.
So how do we understand Luke’s statement? Here we must remember the context of this sermon. Crowds of people have come to follow Jesus from far off. They have been with him for a long time, and many have run out of food. This implies that these crowds long to hear the teaching of Jesus more than to eat or drink! So Jesus addresses them directly: the people right in front of him who have forsaken bodily food to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. He says, “Blessed are you,” not “Blessed are those.” Their physical hunger and thirst are signs of an even deeper spiritual hunger and thirst for righteousness.
In a homily on the Sermon on the Mount, Pope St. Leo the Great teaches this:
It is nothing bodily, nothing earthly, that this hunger, this thirst seeks for: but it desires to be satiated with the good food of righteousness, and wants to be admitted to all the deepest mysteries, and be filled with the Lord himself. Happy the mind that craves this food and is eager for such drink, which it certainly would not seek for if it had never tasted of its sweetness. But hearing the prophet’s spirit saying to him, “Taste and see that the Lord is sweet,” it has received some portion of sweetness from on high.
Luke probably does not add “for righteousness” because he was reporting the exact words of the Lord. And the Lord wanted to reassure the crowds in front of him that the fact that they were poor and without food did not exclude them from blessedness. On the contrary, because their hunger and thirst were voluntarily chosen in order to follow him, it was a sign of God’s favor. Moreover, those who are hungry and thirsty are more able to be compassionate with others who are hungry and thirsty. Mother Teresa used to say that in order to understand the poor, we must experience poverty, and in order to understand the hungry, we must experience hunger. So, in this way even those who suffer actual physical hunger and thirst are blessed. And in this way also the Lord commends fasting and abstinence.
The reward promised to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness is that they shall “have their fill,” or “be satisfied.” It is obvious why the appropriate reward for those who hunger and thirst is to have that hunger and thirst satisfied. And they shall be satisfied or filled with righteousness, not just physical food—not only experiencing moral rectitude in themselves, but living in the company of saints. Thus, they shall live in a perfectly just society. In this way, the reward exceeds the cause for merit, since God gives even more than we can desire or work for.
In a sense, this reward also pertains to the present life. Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you besides” (Matt. 6:33). Thus, God will satisfy our natural desires even for things of this world insofar as these things are necessary or useful for attaining the righteousness we desire.
The Greek word chortasthesontai, translated here as “will be satisfied,” originally refers to feeding or fattening cattle in a stall. This implies that they shall not have to work to acquire this food in the life to come, but God himself will provide this spiritual food and drink for their souls, while they stand and rest in his presence. And all of this is just and appropriate for those who have desired righteousness above all else and who have worked to achieve it.
The great obstacle to living out this Beatitude is that we tend to know and appreciate lesser goods better than we know and appreciate greater goods. So rather than hungering and thirsting for righteousness, we hunger and thirst for material things. And rather than hungering and thirsting that justice be established for all, we hunger and thirst for what is due to us. This self-centered love of the least goods, which is the starting point for those born in original sin, mightily opposes the hunger and thirst for righteousness.
The first thing that needs to happen is our eyes must be opened to the real order of goods—that is, we must learn to see that spiritual goods are greater than material goods. Part of this learning process comes from experience, and part from trust in those who already see for themselves.
Experience teaches us that material goods inevitably disappoint us. We may eat and drink as much as we like, but three things usually happen if we indulge our desires for physical food and drink: we feel bloated and slow, and then in a short time we feel hungry all over again, and after all that we become obese from overeating. And this kind of thing happens not only with food, but with any good that satisfies only our emotions. If we try to find emotional satisfaction in a human relationship, seeking to be and feel loved, we are inevitably disappointed. Passing goods promise much but deliver little. This is why St. John says simply, “The world and its desire is passing away” (1 John 2:17). So experience teaches us to value material, passing goods less and less
Sometimes God intervenes in our lives to starkly manifest to us the insufficiency of created and material goods. A young woman is infatuated with a man who suddenly dies in a tragic accident. A young man has dreams of making great wealth on a business deal, then he is cheated out of everything he owns. A married couple are obsessed with living a life of luxury, when suddenly their child gets cancer. Experiences like these have a way of recalibrating our lives.
On the other hand, trust in those who already see the right order of goods for themselves helps us to value spiritual goods more. Even someone with very little virtue can usually identify a virtuous person. It is not hard to see that Mother Teresa of Calcutta or Padre Pio is virtuous. If we are willing to trust someone virtuous as a guide for our spiritual life to seek after certain spiritual goods more and to follow the path he sets out for us, we will find those goods and begin to experience for ourselves the joys they bring. Gradually, in this way, we begin to perceive the true order of goods, and things like ice cream (or their adult equivalents) will attract us less and less while things like prayer and justice will attract us more and more.
A second thing that needs to happen if we are to overcome difficulties in living this Beatitude: we need to grow in empathy so that we see others as we see ourselves. Empathy means more than going through what another is going through; it also means identifying with the other. Empathy is the ability to live within another person. And this ability, although it has a natural dimension, is only fully realized in the supernatural order. Empathy first requires that we live in Christ, and then through Christ to live within the Christ who is in our neighbor.
It is fairly obvious that “blessed are those who hunger” corresponds to the petition “give us this day our daily bread.” For in this petition we ask not only for physical bread for our bodies, but also all the necessities of life, physical and spiritual. And most of all, we ask for the Eucharist, which is righteousness itself.