Fr. David Garcia, a senior advisor at Catholic Relief Services who works with members of the clergy, writes about hunger, Lent and Operation Rice Bowl in the San Antonio News-Express:
Early last month I read a disturbing article on the front page of the New York Times entitled “One Eats Today, the Other Tomorrow.”
It told of families in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who are faced with the daily terrible choice of which child will eat while the other must wait until the next day. It was heartbreaking to read as one of the parents interviewed said, “At night they will be weak. Surely they complain. But there is nothing we can do.”
This is what many of our brothers and sisters across the ocean face every day of their lives. There are over 1 billion people in the world today who do not know whether they will eat on any given day. It is the first time in the history of the human race that such a number of people are food insecure.
Another 2 billion are just a step ahead, and any disaster or stroke of bad luck could push them into the food-deprived category easily.
A poor crop due to drought or pest infestation could mean a year of hunger.
An ethnic, tribal or other civil conflict, which happen often in the poorest countries, could send them fleeing for their lives away from their homes, leaving them vulnerable refugees in strange lands.
So many people are living on the margins.Imagine if you were this parent having to decide which of your children will eat today and which must wait until tomorrow, no matter how much they cry and complain. Imagine your feelings of hopelessness. There is nothing you can do.
Lent is on us. Yes, many American Christians will start penitential practices on Ash Wednesday. Some will practice fasting during the 40 days until Easter. However, I doubt many of us will be weak even on those nights when we cut down on eating.
Our well-fed bodies can easily pass a day with a little less food. In fact, for many of us who carry those extra pounds, days of fast usually just remind us of our need to lose weight and quit consuming so much.
We Americans are simply in love with eating, and we have plenty of food available to choose from and plenty to satisfy those appetites. That is why it is so hard for us to get our arms around what happens to so much of the world’s population every single day.Three billion people with not enough to eat. That is now almost half our planet. So many families are making decisions as to which child eats today and which must wait until tomorrow.
Can we begin to see Lent as a way for us to somehow be in solidarity with those who are hungry?
Can the fasting and other penitential practices of prayer and alms giving spur us to action for those who have so little through no fault of their own?Can our Lent be a moment when we actually reach out to share some of what we have with them so they do not have to make such terrible choices of which children will eat on a given day?
“For I was hungry you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink …” Matthew, 25: 31-46
Jesus gives us our final exam answers in this gospel quote by telling us in advance how we will be judged at the end of our lives. It will not be how much we accumulated, how high we went on the job ladder, or any other category. It will simply be things like feeding the hungry.I work with Catholic Relief Services, the official humanitarian relief and development agency of the Catholic bishops of the United States. Each year CRS sponsors a Lenten project called Operation Rice Bowl, which helps us do what Jesus asks his disciples to do, namely feed others who are hungry.
The Rice Bowl is a small carton you fashion into a bowl. The idea is that from the beginning of Lent you put it on the dining table, or wherever you can see it daily, to remind you that your Lenten sacrifice can literally put food into peoples’ mouths and save lives.
Rice Bowl funds, through many CRS programs, feed the poor of the world. A portion of the funds are also used for the hungry in our community.
Whatever your religious tradition, take the time during this season to share a little something every day with those who have less, especially the hungry overseas. It will amaze you, if you do it daily, how much you can give without really realizing it.
And maybe, just maybe, because of you some parent will not have to choose which child will eat today and which won’t.
