Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

⁴ Let us come to the fourth work and its reward, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” Do you desire to be filled? Whereby? If the flesh long for fullness, after digestion you will suffer hunger again. So He says, “Whosoever drinks of this water shall thirst again.” If the remedy which is applied to a wound heal it, there is no more pain; but that which is applied against hunger, food that is, is so applied as to give relief only for a little while. For when the fullness is past, hunger returns. This remedy of fullness is applied day by day, yet the wound of weakness is not healed. Let us therefore “hunger and thirst after righteousness, that we may be filled” with that righteousness after which we now hunger and thirst. For filled we shall be with that for which we hunger and thirst. Let our inner man then hunger and thirst, for it has its own proper meat and drink. “I,” says He, “am the Bread which came down from heaven.” Here is the bread of the hungry; long also for the drink of the thirsty, “For with You is the well of life.”)