I. When Mary announces the reward of spiritual hunger and the punishment of spiritual satisfaction with self, she touches upon a principle of very wide range, applicable to the needs of mental, of moral, of physical life. If a living being is to benefit by nourishment, whether in body, mind, or spirit, that being must welcome its nourishment by active desire, by appetite. This is plain enough in the life of the body. Food, we all know, as a rule, benefits neither man nor beast unless there be relish or appetite for it. So again with mental life, whether in a man or a child. If knowledge is to do good; if the mind is to digest and make knowledge its own, then there must be a desire or appetite for it. If the mind have no thirst or appetite for knowledge, it will be sent empty away from the choicest library, from the most gifted teachers. Nothing can compensate for the absence of intellectual appetite. And this is also true of the spiritual world. What food is to the body; what useful information or speculative thought is to the mind of man; that religious truth and the supernatural grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ are to man's highest nature, to his undying personality, to his spirit. Religious truth forced upon a soul which has no desire for it does not illuminate, it only provokes a secret or avowed hostility. The soul must desire God as its true life, its true force, if God is to enlighten and strengthen it. Without this desire He will do nothing for it. It will be sent empty away.
II. God gives to every single human soul a sort of provisional or preliminary endowment, which creates in the soul a longing for Himself. Even when our Lord stood before the Jewish people with His startling miracles; with His words such as never man spake; with the play and impress of a character that was unique and incomparable, He knew and said that this alone would not exert over any human soul that decisive influence which results in conversion. "No man," He said, "can come to Me except the Father which hath sent Me draw him." This drawing this original inward impulse towards religious truth and grace is what we commonly call preventive grace. Like other tastes, a hunger for spiritual things is, to a great extent, within our power to encourage or repress, although at first it is the gift of God. There are many forms of appetite which we can well dispense with; with this, never. There are many banquets from which with impunity we may be sent empty away; from this, never. We cannot afford the eternal loss of God. Let us ask Him to give us a strong desire to enjoy Him for ever. He will do for us what He has done for thousands before us: He will give us this hunger here and its reward hereafter.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit,No. 900.
References: Luke 1:53. Three Hundred Outlines on the New Testament,p. 42.Luke 1:57-80. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 338.