NOTES for Luk 5:27-32
"Blessed are those who hunger..." There are people in whom this thirst for God lives. They can always be recognized. This feeling, when it is present in a person, is so strong and deep that it changes him in the foundations of his personality. Let us think about this thirst. Perhaps the main thing that characterizes any thirst is the suffering this feeling brings, and the greater the thirst, the greater the suffering. For us, the church is often the place where we come to rest our soul, to be healed of spiritual ailments, and prayer is the inexpressible pleasure of communion. But we forget that true thirst for God is always joined to suffering for God. If a person truly thirsts for God, then he never has enough communion with God. Here there can never be any settled satisfaction. Let us admit that we often observe in ourselves this calm possession of the truth. But most often this is simply inertia of consciousness in us, a consciousness unable to remain always in an unsatisfied search.
"...for they shall be filled." We must always sense within ourselves the gaping emptiness that God will fill. Otherwise, what will that main meeting mean for us? But sensing emptiness within ourselves is difficult; this is precisely the suffering of which we are speaking. One way or another, we cannot fail to understand that the spiritual food given to us by God's grace is only crumbs, tiny grains, the highest asceticism in the world.