Article June 5, 1943 Issue

The Fourth and Fifth Beatitudes

[Of Special Interest to Youth]

ANN PUTCAMP

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." No more appropriate words could have been used to convey the Master's thought than these of the fourth beatitude. Many in Palestine knew what hunger and thirst meant. More than one famine had driven the people to Egypt for corn. Some villages might be near a spring, but others several miles from it. Even today, the women of such villages come once a week to the spring, and each carries home over the rocky hillsides a goatskin of water, the week's supply for her family.

Jesus saw that more than material supply was needed for suffering humanity. He knew that many were yearning for the things of Spirit, and he blessed this eagerness with promise of fulfillment. Later, he proved the truth of this promise by healing and feeding a multitude. The story is told in the fourteenth chapter of Matthew. It was after the beheading of John the Baptist, the cruel and wanton act of a crafty ruler. When Jesus heard of it he sought the quiet and magnitude of the desert to be alone with God. The people, many of them John's disciples, followed Jesus into the desert. They were indeed hungry with the intensity of broken hearts, parched with the terror an unjust ruler inspires, starving for that right thinking which only the Master had to give.

With compassion and healing he fed them. Sick bodies and hearts were made whole. They stayed with him until evening with no thought of material food or of an attempt to obtain it. The disciples felt concern for them, but Jesus' vision was keener. He said, "They need not depart; give ye them to eat." And so the multitude was fed—through a miracle, with five loaves and two fishes? So it seemed to human sight; but really it was by the blessing of fulfillment of right desire, as had been promised. As Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 2), "Yes, the desire which goes forth hungering after righteousness is blessed of our Father, and it does not return unto us void."

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Mrs. Eddy's Place
June 5, 1943
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