Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. — Matthew 5:6
These words carry an exceptionally deep meaning beyond their religious context as well.
In contemporary language they may be read thus: blessed are those who do not acquiesce in injustice, who never cease to seek truth, integrity and the common good — because their effort is not in vain. It is they who, in the end, build a world worth living in.
From the perspective of Just Council, hunger for justice does not mean revenge or triumph over an opponent. It means an inner need to restore the proper proportions between rights and duties, freedom and responsibility, strength and compassion.
Today, in Poland and in Europe, it is easy to feel a hunger for success, security or recognition. It is far harder to sustain a hunger for justice — especially when it calls for patience, courage and a readiness to act without immediate reward.
And yet history shows that the greatest changes began precisely with people who could not remain indifferent to what needed repair.
There is something remarkable about this sentence.
Most of us know the feeling of hunger. Hunger for security. Hunger for recognition. Hunger for success. Sometimes simply a hunger for peace and quiet.
But a hunger for justice? That is a rarer thing.
In my life I have met people who gave up time, money, career, and sometimes even their own peace of mind, because they could not pass by indifferently something they considered wrong. They did not do so because they were certain of victory. Often quite the opposite. Their inner compass simply would not let them look away.
Over the years I have noticed that it was precisely they who left the most lasting mark. They were not always front-page figures. More often they were the doctor who stayed with a patient after hours. The teacher who gave a pupil extra time. The entrepreneur who did not exploit an advantage, though he could have. The official who remembered that behind every case stands a human being.
The world very often rewards effectiveness. History far more often remembers justice.
Perhaps that is why this passage does not speak of those who already possess justice. It speaks of those who long for it. Who are still seeking it. Who are not indifferent. For indifference is the opposite of both love and justice.
Looking at the history of Poland, of Europe and of my own life, I increasingly think that the development of societies begins not with great reforms, but at the moment when enough people decide that certain things are not a matter of indifference to them.
Perhaps that is the meaning of this beatitude. Not the promise of an easy reward. But a reminder that a person who never ceases to seek what is right preserves within himself something exceptionally precious — the ability to tell the good from the convenient. And that is an ability every generation needs anew.
A thought for today. Justice does not begin in a court of law or in parliament. It begins at the moment when a person recognises that the good of another human being is also his own responsibility.
