THE BLISS OF THE STARVING

SPIRIT
The 4th Beatitude from the Gospel
According to Matthew
 Matthew 5: 6 "Blessed are
those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness, for they shall be
satisfied."
 A working man in Palestine
ate meat only once a week,
and in Palestine the working
man and the day labourer
werc never far from the
border-line of real hunger
and actual starvation.
 "Hunger and thirst" is a metaphor
that doesn't resonate today as it did
in Jesus' day, when food and water
were scarce and people were often
hungry and thirsty.

"Whoever comes to me shall not

hunger, and whoever
believes in me shall never thirst"
(John 6:35).
 HOW INTENSE IS OUR DESIRE FOR
GOODNESS?
Most people have an instinctive desire
for goodness, but that desire is wistful
and nebulous rather than sharp and
intense and when the moment of
decision comes they are not prepared to
make the effort and the sacrifice which
real goodness demands.
 Demanding & frightening, but most
comforting beatitude -
the meaning that the man who is
blessed is not necessarily the man who
achieves this goodness, bu the man
who longs for it with his whole heart. If
blessedness came only to him who
achieved, then none would be blessed.
But blessedness comes to the man
who, in spite of failures and failings, still
clutches to him the passionate love of
the highest.
 Achieve goodness vs Long for it
—Goodness " the implacable
hunter," is always at their heels. The
worst of men is " condemned to
some kind of nobility." Even if a man
never attains goodness, if to the
oend of the day he is still hungering
and thirsting for it, he is not shut out
from blessedness.
 In the Greek language, there are
different grammatical cases that show
how a word functions in a sentence.
These are the Genetive case and
Accusative case.
The genitive case is used to say "of"
something, while the accusative
case is more like saying "the".
Verbs of hungering and thirsting are
usually followed by the genitive
case, which means the person
desires a part of something, not the
whole thing.
 However, in the Beatitude, the
word for "righteousness" is in the
accusative case.This means the
person hungers and thirsts for all
of righteousness, not just a part.
The Beatitude uses a special
grammatical construction to
emphasize that those who hunger
and thirst for righteousness desire
all of it, not just some of it.
 Most people settle for being good
in some ways, but not all.
For example, someone might be
honest and moral, but cold and
uncaring towards others' problems.
This is like having only half of
goodness. On the other hand,
someone might have flaws like
drinking or gambling, but be
generous and helpful to those in
need. This is also just a partial of
goodness.
 This beatitude says, it is not
enough to be satisfied with a partial
goodness. Blessed is the man who
hungers and thirsts for the goodness
which is total.
• So then, the translation of the fourth
beatitude is:
"O the bliss of the man who longs for
total righteousness as a starving man
longs for food, and a man perishing
of thirst longs for water, for that man
will be truly satisfied!"
Thank you for listening!
Group 4: Charmaine Lorilla
Rea Almaden
Christine Erebete
Joyce Arriesgado
Crisha Soliven
John Ray Rona