Hunger for Righteousness

I woke up an hour and a half before the alarm this morning, suddenly hungry for God. I know a lot of my friends won't know what that means, and I know a lot of them think it's something fake. I don't care about that, because what I mean is something real. It's like you've been eating candy and chocolate cake and drinking soda for every meal for a week and suddenly you realize how bad it all taste and you want to sit down to a tall glass of water or maybe two glasses because the first one will taste so good and a plate of salad and a nice reasonably sized steak.

And the words that impressed on my mind were words that ached in my soul when I was younger, but had forgotten for a little whiel, but now they came back and they were "Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after Righteousness, for they shall be filled. (Matthew 5:4). And I thought of them over and over and then I thought of many other things, like how good it would to go to Confession this weekend and how loved I am and how good it is to know the Lord and many other things, and even though I couldn't sleep, I was happy. And when the alarm went off, I bounded out of bed and got to work, because there was a lot to do.

And I have all these hard drives to harvest my old information from, because Lee bought me a part that lets me attach my old hard drives to my newer computer. So I found the folder of old sermons by my favorite preacher in all of the world, Father Larry Richards. Father Larry is just a regular guy from Pittsburgh who loves Jesus and is a priest and gives his life telling other people how great it is that Jesus loves a jerk like him. I love him a lot, and his preaching helped lead me back to the Lord when I was lost. And I thought, hey I'll listen to one of his sermons from today, but an old year, because today is a feast day, The Feast of All Saints (All Hallows Day, where All Hallow's Eve, of Halloween, gets its name.) And so I pulled up his sermon from November 1, 2000. It was the very first one I picked, I'm not making this up. And across my tired computer speakers, the first words out of Father Larry's lips were these, "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after holiness, for they have their fill." (Matthew 5:4).

Yes, Lord. I am so hungry. Fill me up.