VI. The blessedness of desiring righteousness
After this the Lord goes on to say:
blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied Matthew 5:6 .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'sspirit saying to him:
taste and see that the Lord is sweet ;it has received some portion of sweetness from on high, and blazed out intolove of the purest pleasure, so that spurning all things temporal, it is seized with the utmost eagerness for eating and drinking righteousness, and grasps the truth of that first commandment which says:
You shall love the Lord your God out of all your heart, and out of all your mind, and out of all your strength :since to love God is nothing else but to love righteousness. In fine, as in that passage the care for one's neighbour is joined to the love of God, so, too, here the virtue of mercy is linked to the desire for righteousness, and it is said:
VII. The blessedness of the merciful
Blessed are the merciful, for God shall have mercy on them Matthew 5:7 .Recognize, Christian, the worth of your wisdom, and understand to what rewards you are called, and by what methods of discipline you must attain thereto. Mercy wishes you to be merciful, righteousness to be righteous, that the Creator may be seen in His creature, and the image of God may be reflected in the mirror of thehuman heart expressed by the lines of imitation. The faith of those who do good is free from anxiety: you shall have all your desires, and shall obtain without end what you love. And since through your almsgiving all things are pure to you, to that blessedness also you shall attain which is promised in consequence where the Lord says:
VIII. The blessedness of a pure heart
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God Matthew 5:8 .Great is the happiness, beloved, of him for whom so great a reward is prepared. What, then, is it to have the heart pure, but to strive after those virtues which are mentioned above? And how great theblessedness of seeing God, what mind can conceive, what tongue declare? And yet this shall ensue when man's nature is transformed, so that no longer
in a mirror,nor
in a riddle,but
face to face 1 Corinthians 13:12it sees the very Godhead
as He is 1 John 3:2,which no man could see ; and through the unspeakable joy of eternal contemplation obtains that
which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man.