find it strange, however, if this happens. For as much as we will not stop being
CHAPTER 3: The Meek Those Who Hunger for Righteousness and the Merciful
find it strange, however, if this happens. For as much as we will not stop being trampled, as we will not seek that anyone be burdened or interested for our profit, and as we will not ask in short except that justice and equity reign and take place: if we still have to be hungry and thirsty: and - God will let us languish for a while, to test our patience OR our faith. For if we were now at rest, so that nothing failed us, that men tried to please us, and that no one gave us any annoyance or hindrance, where would the practice of this doctrine which is here laid down be?
So we must be hungry and thirsty. And as we have seen that we must be gentle, and even though we live among wild beasts, who have their teeth sharp, and their paws ready for us to tear, to dismember, and to swallow, however it is necessary that we always persist in patience and simplicity: so it is necessary that we hunger and thirst to pray to God: and again that he permits us to suffer although our cause is just nevertheless that we are not overwhelmed with such sadness, and despair, that it is to make us lose all self-control: but that we are kept in this waiting, that in the end it will provide for all our needs. So this is still what we have to remember about this passage.
Now then our Lord Jesus Christ says, Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Here is another teaching deeply opposed to the imagination of men. For where do we think that our happiness consists, except that we are not tormented by this or that: but that we are spared, and that if anyone is bad, let him endure it, and that we know nothing of it, and that it does not annoy us: and that not only are we peaceful in our persons, but that nothing else troubles us, when we will thus have everything that our appetite desires, that we will not conceive any sorrow or anger, nor anguish from all the extortions which are committed in this world. And that's why many people think they're happy when they're nonchalant, when they can live at ease without looking at anyone else. And in fact they want to cover their ears, so that no one faces them with any report that affects them. For we have two kinds of passions which torment us: each one, feeling his evil, despite himself: and then there is also compassion, when we see a sick poor person being so very tormented that nothing more: when we see someone who is unexpectedly afflicted, the other stripped of worldly goods, and then poor orphans who have lost their father, or a woman who has lost her husband; afterwards, when there will be very great confusions, as in fact we see them, this means that we become angry. Now those who want to be happy (i.e. according to their sense), first they want to be spared, and that no harm be done to them, neither in their persons nor in their goods: they