Man’s existence is full of priceless, eternal universal value.
Let us repossess it, and prepare and conform our lives in righteousness
for our encounter with the Divine Volition.
4/26/2017
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled». But who really suffers hunger and thirst? Who dies of starvation if he finds no justice? And what justice does he seek to quench his thirst? The desire for Justice is universal. It is the thought that without justice everything would be unbearable; everything would be relative. Divine justice rules the universe and love is the engine.
Man is always thirsty, always pursuing something as if it were a life necessity, because the life that is in him requires nourishment. It is not thirst or hunger that is lacking in his heart. And with what is it filled if not with passions, wickedness, worldly baseness and mediocrity? How often does his flesh or pride lead him to satisfy his thirst. From the time he is born into the world, is not this what every man is driven to by man himself? What do we feel, at some point in life, that our withered soul is in need of?
Oh man, contemplate the earth, the destiny of peoples and nations. Contemplate every man’s lifestory and the beginning of history to its very end. Lift your gaze to the heavens, to the heavenly spheres, to the infinite universe; sigh over its immense and pure beauty and then bring your gaze back down to earth and see how filthy it is with sin, oppression, iniquity, cynicism, and wickedness; look at entreated death crash down on the defenseless sprouts of innocence, the massacre of the innocents and the weak, and the beauty of the seas and the air, of the forests, mountains and waters, of every beautiful and good thing that is irreperably polluted, disfigured and defiled by your senseless pride. If you do not feel a tremendous cry rise up within you, then what is it worth living? If you do not feel a cry of pain and protest that wants to ascend to heaven, to the ear of God; if your heart does not feel a pang of compassion, the urgency to act, repair and offer yourself to free the world of thievery, violence and sin, because you live in this universe? If in the face of foolishness that humiliates reason, the value of money that determines life’s values, the indifference that breads hatred, if looking at the strong and the powerful mocking those considered the least, the humble, the weak; if in the face of the horrific spectacle of murders, kidnappings and unpunished rapes you are not enraged or do not feel indignation and compassion, then what will await you if not a fate of damnation and a closed door to the heavenly beatitudes, which can be opened only if you thirst for grace and righteousness. Only by eagerly wanting sin to disappear can the soul be led to where sin does not exist.
Jesus cried at the sight of Jerusalem, contemplating her obstinacy toward injustice and in not recognizing the path of peace, ignoring that she had been visited. Jesus weeps over the destiny of men and their children and suffers for each one that He would like to save. Jesus weeps seeing us in the grip of pride, deceit and ambition. He cries when He sees his creature, whom He wants to resemble Himself happy and blessed, thwart these divine plans and go against God’s loving projects, thriving in disorder, disharmony and death. Jesus not only weeps; His tears are accompanied by anger and indignation, which ultimately become rage. There is no hesitation in overturning the tables of the merchants who profaned the temple. The obedient, good and meek Jesus rebels and forcefully uses a whip of cords against those who transformed the house of God into a trading place. Nor does He spare any accusation against the Pharisees. Jesus has no human fear and comdemns the evil, corruption and hypocrisy of the powerful. His words remain unchanged even today in a world of Pharisees when we are not Pharisees ourselves. Today, more than ever, it is necessary to speak out against the nests of vipers scattered throughout the world, against the powerful and their actions that spew upon the fate of peoples the dung of their atrocities, who cause divisions and wars among the poor, and whose greed impoverishes the land of its resources of beauty. And instead of listening to Jesus’ thundering and sorrowful voice, Who does not hesitate to denounce crimes, injustice and hypocrisy, what do we do? Where do we turn our ear? What do we look at and what are we suspicious about? We are lost, confused and alone, pursuing fictitious and evanescent insignia for which we are willing to sell ourselves to injustice just to have the ‘nothing’ that we so long for. Without thirst for righteousness, how can there be progress, how can man be ennobled, and how can he think of attaining bliss and holiness?
Yet, Jesus is not revolutionary; He isn’t asking us to incite revolutions or to organize ourselves into bands, parties and corporations and fight with the weapons of the world. He wants us to be in the world, but not of the world. The righteousness that Jesus proposes to man is far from the one we are used to contemplating. Human righteousness is too polluted by the human will to be just. Passions, biases and personal interests alchemically mingle with the rigid statutes of the law and make of them an abomination. The law that must guide our thoughts, actions and words is another one altogether. Jesus healed on Saturday against the law, because He obeyed the law of consciousness and love. The justice to which man must really turn his thirst to is divine justice. Divine justice lies beyond the dimensions of time and visible space. It is eternal and infallible.
Without faith how can one be thirsty? Faith alone ensures us that we will encounter that righteousness; only the certainty of being judged divinely beyond the deadly threshold can strengthen our spirit to speak out in defense of justice. Having hunger and thirst for righteousness means hungering and thirsting for the Judge, not for the harsh desire to punish the kings and reward the good. Luisa had an immense thirst for Jesus. He was the greatest passion of her life. She lived in an inexhaustible desire to quench herself of Jesus, and the more she was quenched the more she thirsted for Him. This filled her with so much love that she became a victim for humanity’s sake. How many times did Luisa, thanks to her state of sacrificial victim, placate the divine justice that man draws upon himself by his continuous sins, his disaffection and irresistible urge to violate peace? How many times did she come between us and divine rage, that carried out its office of balancing the fate of the universe upset by the action of sin? Let us walk in her footsteps, which is also the example given us by Jesus: offering our lives in reparation for the injustices committed by sinful and obstinate man. Let us live for the sake of divine justice, knowing that our life can become the daily bread and water to satisfy the hunger and thirst for righteousness, since we have the real power of making choices about our lives. Hungering and thirsting for righteousness is the healthy and true symptom of the man who has the desire and need to know the meaning of his actions; the need to know their value and the discovery that nothing is useless, foolish, and without consequences. Our every action has an impact on the level of justice. Even when we sit quietly closed up in our dark little corner, unseen and unheard, even our state of just being – both are subject to judgment because they have produced certain consequences in the universe. Man’s existence is full of priceless, eternal universal value. Let us repossess it, and prepare and conform our lives in righteousness for our encounter with the Divine Volition.
Fiat.