Blessed are the hungry and thirsty for justice: they will be satisfied.

There is an essential common element that passes like a current from one beatitude to another. It passes so well, we could say each one contains them all. The essential common element of all beatitudes is that the time for liberation arrived because the Messiah appeared in the history of mankind. Before he came, in the absence of a permanent source of the Holy Spirit, that is Jesus himself, it was impossible to get away from the nullity of existence, to escape death and the non-sense that hung heavily over lives, to enter into the easy, free practice of filial dialogue with God and to remain permanently in a state of quaking adoration, filled with the holy presence both within and all around! Now with Christ the Messiah, the fullness of time has been reached.

To continue the parable of psalm 18, the sun took a long time to rise and reach its peak. Now that it has, it caresses the world with its light and warmth!

Here, in this beatitude, it is mainly God’s historical reply, prophetically announced by so many passages by prophets and psalmists: “The time has come where justice is balanced between heavens” (Psalm 84)

What came before was a tragedy of injustice, violence, exaction and suppression in many ways: raiding wars, constraints applied to round-up prisoners for free labour, to glean spoils, mainly human spoils, namely slaves. We know that in the times of Caeser and Augustus, almost eight-tenths of the population of the Roman empire was made up of slaves. So without sentimentality, we can work out what Jesus was referring to when he said. “The hungry and the thirsty for justice.” When then, sigh the oppressed, exploited population, will the era of God’s justice come? Progress intervened in the story two thousand years after the coming of Jesus and it is still terribly far from having achieved its goal. The gospel is hardly listened to and followed in many states and societies, less still by many men, even those who call themselves “Christians.” But Jesus has given hope back to the world by inspiring small communities of men and we have been able to say, “See how they love one another.” Their way of life is modelled on his, which means in the way of God. There is here an exemplary answer, to take onboard with patience, but it is already comforting and full of certain promise for victims of injustice.

Marthe Robin saw herself, long before the Vatican Council II, as inspired by heaven to establish communities where there were no longer ‘poor people’ She envisioned communities based on “the most perfect equalisation possible between people of their material and spiritual goods.” We know that the equalisation of material goods is surely far easier than exchanging spiritual goods, or rather sharing people’s experiences, efforts and progress. To do that, you must, in the Holy Spirit, apply yourself with loyalty and perseverance, to live without hiding, without anything unspoken, in the spirit of one caring for all and all caring for one; you must use all the resources of a critical spirit both in terms of yourself and others - with this be unforgiving of lies and mediocrity - in the truth and authentic love. We do not know that Jesus spoiled his disciples, nor that Mary, comforted with sentimentality those who still had to make progress. This is why many Christian groups who call themselves communities are scarcely that, because they are missing this vigour, this truth, this personalism of growth, this universal franchise, which with a vocabulary of clarity, denounces the various aspects of mediocrity. It is not a community formed by people of average generosity, but of people who are busy giving constantly and growing by giving.

Grow and give and never let up! At heart are there really that many men and women gripped by such a hunger and thirst for justice? Jesus, however, only spoke to them! To others too if they would regally accept sacrificing their egos and set to work, paying tirelessly from their person. The community beatitude is the fruit of permanent struggle!

Theresa of the Child Jesus, who we reproached for being voluntarist, replied that it is in all of our interests for God to be stubborn, as otherwise, he would have let this creation that is so capricious and disappointing fall by the wayside long ago! On the contrary, he is obstinate in believing that we can become nobler and improve. Despite all the sins of laziness, of inertia in the trenches of habit, God does not despair that his creation will regain vigour, the impetus to reach the peak in all areas.

God’s justice is exactly what God is, just and for eternity. He is loyal to his own fervour, to his own fire. He never burns out, nor does the coal turn to ash. He has nothing to do with that fire that does not go out, which simmers and smokes, and which in the gospel is called “the fires of purgatory or Gehenna.” The fire of God lights up like the burning bush (Exodus 3, 1-6) in the Sinai desert. Moses, beaten down by the trials of his people reduced into slavery, discovers in this apparition that his God wants him to wake up and participate energetically in his own liberation. Moses understands that God is waiting for each one of his children to become like the burning bush, to light up and never be consumed. That is where God is, eternally! That is what his creation is called to understand!

Created by the Infinite, we should not be surprised that we are marked with it. Holiness and justice are found to be a call to search, a call to infinite progression. Our origin determines us in a given sense to move forward to what is ahead of us! In the same way as a ray of sun wouldn’t know how to stop and retract. The vital force is truly at the basis of the will to love and to become “just,” a most beautiful term, characterised by the saints of Israel and in particular Joseph. Adapting to fit your God, constantly and increasingly, in that even He is momentum, generosity, enthusiasm and He inspires you with his hungry and thirsty breath. Being satisfied with yourself and with the world would be utterly in contradiction with our origin, rooted in the flaming fire of heaven. It would be denying what is born of the Infinite, we cannot behave in such a way we must infinitely search, work and love in God’s way.

In its true sense, the Church was founded by its Master and Lord so that it could hold all human societies and communities loud and clear, contesting any mediocrity and any possibility of inertia. Starting with itself. This should be done by updating and questioning, not just in conciliar times but daily, absolutely every day! Find me a man or a community that is satisfied, you can be sure that their contact with God has been broken! Heaven has nothing to do with “well-deserved eternal rest” we see on religious plaques, it lives in “God and his people’s hunger and thirst for justice.” When it comes to confirming this ardent view of human destiny in the way of God’s destiny in the Gospel, we are simply spoilt for choice, faced with so many occasions when Jesus appeared to us as a living fire.

Florin Callerand,
January 19th, 1991
“A poor person calls, God responds” p.185…201

French to English translation by Debbie Garrick and Cécile Simon