12 days ‒ Emptying oneself of the spirit of the world - Day 8

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness

Prayer to the Holy Spirit 

O Holy Spirit, inspire me. God’s love, engulf me. Holy Mary, my Mother, guide me in the right ways, look at me, and together with Jesus, bless me. Keep me from all evil, from all delusions and all threats. Mary, The Spouse of the Holy Spirit, obtain for me the grace of having hunger and thirst for righteousness. Amen!

The Word of God 

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matt 5:6).

Meditation 

Having created us in His image and likeness, God made us rational. He gave us the ability to use reason to get to know God and better understand ourselves and the world’s rules. The thirst for righteousness was oriented towards God—the creature should praise its Creator and stay with Him. At the moment of original sin, the thirst for righteousness was tainted. From then on, at the very centre of the human concept of justice instead of God, there is the human “self.” Living in the world, people experience many situations that may seem unfair. The fact that we often don’t understand why this happens is even more painful. We would like to live our lives in a sense of justice. The more often we are confronted with a lack of it, the more we feel the thirst for it. This blessing tells us of an inner attitude towards injustice. The original text of Scripture for the word “thirst” uses the Greek word dipsaó, which literally means “to suffer from thirst.” It’s not just any thirst. It’s an eager desire for justice that causes real pain and suffering and shakes a man who experiences a lack of righteousness! That strong experience is to get to the bottom, to the very root of our humanity, to this original sense of justice that can be fulfilled only in God. The world asks for the reasons of injustice: why did this happen? The more often we ask “why,” the more we suffer because we are not able to find the answer. So what is the way out? During the second day of our retreat, we focused on sin that separates us from God, both now and eternally. Eternal separation from God is called hell. This is the truth about us: we are still sinners. It is true that because of our sins, we deserve hell and damnation. We should never forget about it. But if we were really convinced about it, we wouldn’t rebel in hardships because we would know that we deserve much worse punishment. Only Christ’s Blood is our salvation, and only through it may we enter the heavens. And if I realize that there is really nothing in me that deserves heaven, I know that “this little experience” of suffering I got from God, although I deserve condemnation, is not a sign of injustice but a sign of Divine Mercy that wants to cleanse me in this life. In this suffering, I may adhere to Christ, to His Cross and be joined with Him. The suffering experienced this way becomes the area of building unique intimacy and closeness with Christ. And it can be comprehended only in the heart, between me and Him. This is not something that can be learned from books. This is something that can be learned from prayer. The suffering experienced this way, which wrenches my heart, allows me to get to what is primary in me: the understanding that the world won’t satisfy me. It won’t give me the answer to my question “why?” Only God can satisfy my needs. When my heart is wrenched with suffering and a call for righteousness, then I am very close to Christ, who is torn on the Cross and cries to the Father for justice. Not for justice on earth, which is about giving back to everyone what they deserve because we deserve condemnation for our sins, but for divine justice, which is justification and mercy. “Father, forgive them” (Lk 23:34). Blessed Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński said that divine justice is more merciful than human mercy. Because God knows everything.

Mary’s thirst for righteousness in Magnificat: “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts” (Lk 1:51). Mary experienced this blessing under the cross, where she saw how her innocent Son, who was without sin, suffered for the greatest guilts in the world. Standing at the feet of the cross, she knew that the victory belonged to God and He was the one to show strength. In her suffering, she reunifies with God. Her heart is torn apart, and suffering because of the thirst for righteousness becomes the supernatural stream of divine grace, an intercessory prayer. No one has ever reunited with Jesus like her, therefore Christ told John to adhere with all his life to Mary because only she can teach him to experience such thirst for righteousness.

The struggle of standing up to evil: what does it consist in? Whenever God wants to give us such a feeling of satiation, the spirit of the world will try to stop us and restrict us to asking only “why” and exclusively to an intellectual understanding of our circumstances. Yet, there are matters that cannot be understood intellectually. One can comprehend them only with heart, by the decision to get reunited with God. Especially when we don’t know why something is happening and when there comes anxiety related to the helplessness towards evil.

Spiritual reading 

“It is difficult to persevere in justice because of the strange corruption of the world. The world is now so corrupt, that it seems to be inevitable that religious hearts should be soiled, if not by its mud, at least by its dust. So that it has become a kind of miracle for any one to remain firm in the midst of this impetuous torrent without being drawn in by it, in the midst of that stormy sea without being drowned in it or stripped by the pirates and the corsairs, in the midst of that pestilent air without being infected by it. It is the Virgin, alone faithful, in whom the serpent has never had part, who works this miracle for those who serve her.” 

St. Louis de Montfort, A Treatise on the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, 60

Homework 

In everything that I don’t understand and that brings me suffering, I will repeat: I am accepting it all, Mary; I am hiding in your heart. 

Prayer of consecration 

I am all Yours, and all that I have is Yours, O most loving Christ, through Mary, Your most holy Mother. Amen!