Advent2025 Waiting With Matthew 24

Day 24: Waiting for God’s Righteousness. Today we reflect on Matthew 5:6 – “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Join us this Advent as we sit with the waiting in the first 5 chapters of Matthew's Gospel.

Transcript

Hello friends,

This is Mark Gladman,

Also known as Brother Frederick James,

Your friendly neighbourhood monk in docks.

Welcome to day 24 of our Advent 2025 series,

Waiting with Matthew.

Today as we begin,

I invite you to get yourself into a comfortable position,

To rest in the moment,

To bring yourself completely here to this point in time,

This place,

This space.

As we ask God to open our ears,

Our minds and our hearts and begin reflecting on Matthew chapter 5 verse 6.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

For they will be filled.

Now right up,

Let's remind ourselves that hunger and thirst,

They're not polite experiences.

They're not gentle nudges.

They're bodily alarms,

Persistent,

Demanding,

Impossible to ignore.

They rise up from the very core of who we are and insist you need something that you do not yet have.

When Jesus begins the Beatitudes,

He moves deeper and deeper into the human heart.

From the poor in spirit,

To those who mourn,

To the meek,

And now he names the desire that burns beneath all desire.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

For they will be filled.

Notice he doesn't bless those who are righteous.

He blesses those who ache for it.

He blesses the longing itself.

Now when we hear about righteousness,

That word,

We often shrink it down to personal holiness or moral purity,

Avoiding certain behaviors.

But in scripture,

Righteousness isn't small.

It's not private.

It's not merely about my soul or your soul.

In the Bible,

Righteousness is relational.

It's right relationship with God,

Right relationship within our own selves,

Right relationship with one another,

And right relationship with creation.

Righteousness is everything in its proper place,

Everything in harmony,

Everything made whole.

It's shalom.

It's justice.

It's compassion.

It's the world as God dreamed it to be when God first said,

Let there be light.

To hunger and thirst for righteousness is to long for the healing of all things,

Not only the healing of your life,

But the healing of the world.

It is Advent longing at its most ancient and at its most urgent.

Jesus doesn't say blessed are those who have achieved righteousness,

Nor blessed are those who've made themselves holy and not even blessed are those who behave righteously.

He blesses those who yearn.

Hunger is not a flaw.

It's a sign of life.

Only the living hunger and only the hopeful thirst.

To hunger for righteousness is to let God make your heart sensitive to what's not yet healed.

To ache for a wholeness that you can't create on your own.

To refuse to be numb to the pain of the world or the places in yourself that still need mercy.

Hunger is honesty.

Hunger is vulnerability.

Hunger is prayer.

In its rawest form.

And Advent,

The whole season of Advent is filled with craving.

Craving for light.

Craving for peace.

Craving for justice,

For a world reordered around the humility of Bethlehem.

It's not a season for satisfied souls.

It's a season for yearning.

We watch the prophets cry out,

How long,

Oh Lord.

We watch creation groan,

Waiting for its redemption.

We watch Mary carry,

Waiting for birth.

The church waits in hunger.

A church that stretches back through the centuries and forward into the kingdom that's also yet to come.

This beatitude meets us in that collective ache.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Blessed are those who refuse to settle,

Refuse to make peace with injustice,

Refuse to become comfortable with brokenness.

Both within themselves and in the world.

Advent's not about pretending everything is fine.

It's about acknowledging the hunger that only God can fill.

Now sometimes,

Our hunger for righteousness comes from vision.

A sense of what could be.

And then other times,

It comes from heartbreak.

A sense of what should never have been.

And then there are other times again,

Where hunger arises in the places where we're most helpless.

Where we can't fix the situation,

Can't make the world right and can't undo the harm that's been done.

And it's in these places where Jesus speaks his blessing most tenderly.

Blessed are you when you feel powerless in the face of injustice.

Blessed are you when your compassion hurts.

Blessed are you when you see the world as it is and long for the world as it should be.

Blessed are you when your heart will not settle for small hopes or shallow peace.

This hunger,

This hunger is holy.

And it means your spirit is still alive to God.

And unlike the Beatitudes before this,

Where the blessing lies in the present or in the posture.

This one contains a future promise.

For they will be filled.

The Greek word here is chortazo.

It doesn't mean slightly satisfied.

It means to be fed to fullness.

To be filled to overflowing.

To be completely satisfied.

It's the word used for feeding animals until they're full.

Or crowds until they can't eat another bite.

So Jesus here isn't promising a partial justice.

Or an incremental peace.

Or a small personal holiness.

He's promising a fullness that we cannot yet imagine.

A world set right.

A creation restored.

A humanity healed.

A heart filled with God.

Advent is the season that whispers the hunger you feel is not for nothing.

The thirst you carry is not cruel.

It is the ache of a promise expanding inside of you.

You hunger because you were made for the kingdom.

And you thirst because you were made for God.

And God does not disappoint those who hunger for God.

At the end of the beatitude stands the one who fulfills them.

The one who will say,

I am the bread of life.

The one who will cry out from the cross,

I thirst.

The one who comes to those who hunger and feeds them with himself.

Poverty of spirit opens the door.

Hunger for righteousness moves us through it.

But Christ is the feast.

This is the deep mystery of Advent.

Our hunger is not a sign that God is absent.

But that God is shoring near.

The hunger itself is the invitation.

So as we take a moment to allow this to sit with us.

I invite you to take a breath.

Let your shoulders soften.

Let the hunger rise.

Not the hunger you feel in your stomach.

But the one you feel in your chest.

Your throat.

Your heart.

Where do you long for righteousness?

Where do you desire healing?

What part of your life aches for wholeness?

What part of the world breaks your heart?

Hold that hunger before God like a candle in the dark.

You don't need to fix it.

You don't need to understand it.

Just let yourself feel it.

And hear Jesus whisper over that longing.

Blessed are you.

You will be filled.

And as you hold that candle in the dark.

I invite you to pray with me.

God of holy longing.

God of burning hearts and restless hope.

Teach us to hunger for your righteousness.

Where we've settled for too little.

Awaken our desire again.

Where we've grown numb to injustice.

Open our eyes.

Where our hearts are tired.

Breathe your spirit into us again.

Let our hunger lead us to you.

Let our thirst make us seek your presence.

Let our longing become prayer that reshapes us from the inside out.

Fill us.

Not with comfort.

But with courage.

Not with shallow peace.

But with your deep restoring justice.

Not with what the world offers.

But with what only your kingdom can give.

Come Jesus.

Into our hunger.

Come into our waiting.

Come into our longing for the world to be made right.

And so.

As we begin to rise from this time together.

May your hunger for righteousness never fade but deepen into holy desire.

May your longing become the space where Christ fills you with his justice and his joy.

And may you taste even now the first fruits of the kingdom that is coming.

The kingdom that is for you.

The kingdom that will one day fill all things with God.

And may the grace,

Peace,

Love and hope of that God be with you as you hold that candle in the darkness.

Today and every day.

Amen.

Until tomorrow my friends.

God's peace be with you.

Reviews

Thank you. I appreciate your reflection. 💝🙏

Incredible- please continue to bless us, if you are willing and able, with these amazing biblical meditations! So calming, freeing, and inviting to explore deep emotions from within. My soul is refreshed. God bless you!

May we continue to be filled by Christ🙏🏻 thank you for this profound journey through Advent

Fantastic! I learned so much from listening to this teaching. Many thanks and many blessings 🕊️🌟

I've never been more relieved to be craving and hungry 🤗 amen thank you!