“Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.”
It is not enough to simply not sin, but rather to become an expression of divine love. Now, all good that is done that isn’t out of love for God is of no value before God. Becoming virtuous for the sake of being virtuous is to seek a sort of natural perfection, but to seek to love like God is to bind yourself to Him: “But above all these things have love, which is the bond of perfection” (Colossians 3:14). It is the seeking of divine justice, to love as He loves, and to do all for love of Him, that yields the quenching water of love. St. Paul exhorts you: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). “Decline not to the right hand, nor to the left” (Proverbs 4:27), and do not come off the narrow way that leads to life, which is doing all things for His glory and honor, that He may be loved on earth. If you long to know how to express this love, the Scriptures will give you both the way and the inspiration to love. His commandments will teach you how to act in accord with love, and His exhortations will fill you with the love that you need to put them in place: “You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you” (John 15:14); “Such is my beloved, and he is my friend, O ye daughters of Jerusalem” (Song 5:16). Therefore, this thirst is for that of His words, that they may find a living embodiment in you, for which you will be easily satisfied, for they are all laid out in the Book of Life. He says that you will be filled, not because you will be satisfied with yourself, for the one that has seen the perfect love of God can only say: “I am the most foolish of men, and the wisdom of men is not with me. I have not learned wisdom, and have not known the science of saints” (Proverbs 30:2-3). “Being filled” means that you will be given the grace to love and to act in accord with the commandments of the Lord. Receiving our Lord daily at Mass will transform you into His love. Loving imperfectly can be brought to confession, that you may leave with joy at having the inevitable bumps and bruises of imperfect love wiped clean and be restored to the purity of a child: “Then he went down, and washed in the Jordan seven times: according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored, like the flesh of a little child, and he was made clean” (4 Kings 5:14). Ah, how often do people long for a natural righteousness, to be virtuous that they need not cry out to God anymore! No, it is in accepting your littleness, striving to keep His commandments because you love, and always keeping your Beloved before you that you will find Him: “Who is this that cometh up from the desert, flowing with delights, leaning upon her beloved?” (Song 8:5). Thirst, then, o Theophila, for His holy words and the love to put them into action. Thirst for His kingdom on earth, that He may be loved on earth. Thirst for the grace to love well and avidly, and these gifts will be given to you.