“Quench not the Spirit.” (1 Thessalonians 5:19). “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” (Matthew 5:6). Jesus Christ promised us in the Sermon on the Mount that if we will hunger and thirst after righteousness, then we will be filled. He did not say that our hunger would be sated, or our thirst quenched. When John D Rockefeller, the first ever billionaire, was asked how much money is enough, he said, “Just a little bit more.” That may have been facetious, but it is actually correct, at least, it would be if applied to Spiritual matters. When we hunger and thirst after righteousness and are then filled as promised with the Holy Ghost, the divine and sanctifying presence of the Holy Ghost expands our soul to be just a little bigger than the portion of the Spirit with which we are filled. We are never completely satisfied and always hunger and thirst for more righteousness. This is as it should be. C.S. Lewis defined joy as “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” He also explained in another place the reason that our desires remain unsatisfied. “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find until after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same.” If we ever find ourselves in a place where we have completely satisfied our hunger and quenched our thirst, then we were not pursuing righteousness at that time and we were not filled with the Holy Ghost. If we are completely full and stuffed, then that means our soul is not growing above and beyond our current desires. There is an infinite gap between who we are now and who we must become. We should never be fully satisfied. We should quench not the Spirit. But rather, each time we are filled and grow beyond our old desires, we should allow ourselves to continue to hunger and thirst after righteousness so that we may be filled again and again with the Holy Ghost.
