Yet, those whom the Lord in the Sermon on the Mount calls blessed are not such as hunger and thirst after justice in the sense of natural morality only, but such as hunger and thirst after the kingdom of God; such as “seek first the kingdom of God and His justice.” What they seek is not merely whatever is naturally valuable and as such glorifies God: it is (beyond that) the supernatural life, the victory of the God-Man Christ, the salvation of souls, the growth of the Mystical Body of Christ, and man’s transformation in Christ. Socrates, so nobly obsessed by his eternal quest for the naturally good, is still a far cry from St. Francis of Assisi with his insatiable hunger and thirst for the kingdom of God.

It is not enough for us to seek also for the kingdom of God, to labor among other things for the consummation of that kingdom, or to take interest in the problem of the kingdom of God occasionally only, that is, whenever it happens to carry with it a close reference to problems of our personal life. We must seek first the kingdom of God. Our search for the kingdom of God and His justice must be the consuming passion of our souls. The empire of Christ over our souls, as well as in all other souls, must become the paramount theme of our lives. Day and night we must be swayed by the burning desire that God be glorified in all things.

For such has been the way of life of the saints. They, indeed, hunger and thirst after the kingdom of God, postponing all other concerns to the one thing necessary. Theirs is not a limited and conditional interest in the kingdom of God, like that of the rich young man of the Gospel, who would not decide to follow Christ; they are consumed with an unlimited and unreserved longing for Him. They live up to the rule of St. Benedict, “To prefer nothing whatsoever to Christ”; they are undivided in the sense of St. Paul (1 Cor. 7:33).