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"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
For they shall be filled."
(Matthew 5:6)
Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is a fiction novel about a 14th century abbey where seven monks are murdered. Eco, who passed away in 2016, owned a 50,000-volume library and was professor of semiotics at the oldest university in the world, the University of Bologna in Milan, Italy. Semiotics is a literary device where the author uses signs, analogies, metaphors, etc. to communicate. Eco does this brilliantly in this novel. My favorite part is when William of Baskerville arrives at the wealthy Italian abbey, and some monks (who are looking for something) greet him. William, the brilliant investigator sent to solve the murders, tells the monks precisely what they are looking for and where they can find it. By acute analysis of his surroundings, such as footprints in the snow, he informs the monks where they can find the horse, the horse's name, and its precise size! The monks were astounded, and William later tells how he deduced everything by the signs that were left in nature and from his vast knowledge of things in general. The author, Eco, mentions something very important, but it is cloaked or disguised at first, so only later does the reader see it clearly.
The Name of the Rose reminds me of the teachings of our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount in the Beatitudes. Jesus makes a statement, but it takes effort to unpack what He says, for there is more there than originally meets the eye. At first, His words seem like paradox or irony, but when you investigate deeper, you see the absolute genius and brilliance of His teachings.
For the remainder of this week, we will study this fourth Beatitude found in Matthew 5:6: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled."
Who are the hungry and thirsty? What do they receive? And how do we become hungry and thirsty for the things of God and stay that way?
Jesus lets us know up front that He is not speaking of literal hunger or literal thirst, because He says they are hungry and thirsty not for food and drink, but for righteousness. He does, however, use the words to describe literal hunger and thirst to describe how we are to have that same kind of desire for righteousness as those who are starving for food or parched for drink.
The Greek word translated "hunger" is peinao, which means "to crave ardently, to seek with eager desire" (BlueletterBible.org). The word is used in Matthew 4:2 to describe Jesus' hunger after He fasted forty days and nights. It is used in Mary's song of praise, the Magnificat, in Luke 1:53: "He has filled the hungry with good things."
The word translated "thirst' is dipsao, which means to painfully feel and eagerly long for those things which refresh the soul (Ibid.). Jesus uses these words peinao and dipsao in John 6:35: "And Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.'" So, both words taken literally mean to feel physical pain due to being hungry and thirsty for food and drink, but taken in the sense that Jesus gave them here in our text, it means to feel a spiritual hunger and thirst, a longing for that which will satisfy the hunger of the soul and slake the spiritual thirst.
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