Feeding the hungry

India has seen an impressive growth rate in the last decade with the GDP averaging more than 7 per cent per annum. Despite this rapid growth, India is still home to more than a quarter of the hungry people in the world. The effect of climate change on agriculture will adversely affect Indian agriculture, thereby making food availability scarce.

The changing scenario of rising food prices has raised new concerns about food security. It has been estimated that globally 130 million more people have become food insecure due to high food prices, in addition to the existing 850 million.[1] 

Feed the hungry (c.f. Mathew 25:35,37,42), is an ethical imperative for the universal Church, as she responds to the teachings of her Founder, the Lord Jesus, concerning solidarity and the sharing of goods. Moreover, the elimination of world hunger has also, in the global era, become a requirement for safeguarding the peace and stability of the planet. Hunger is not so much dependent on lack of material things as on shortage of social resources, the most important of which is institutional…. It is therefore necessary to cultivate a public conscience that considers food… as universal right of all human beings, without distinction or discrimination.[2] 

In the Bible, hunger is characteristic of the wilderness experience of God’s people so well expressed in this way: “And you shall remember all the way the LORD your God has led you there forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna” (Dt 8:2-3). Among the foods of the desert, bread has many symbolic meanings. In the first place, manna, described as “bread of heaven” and “the food of angles” (Ps 78:24; Wis 16:20). And, in turn, it is seen as a symbol of the Word of the Lord (Dt 8:3; Is 55:2,6,11), of the teachings of wisdom (Prv 9:5), and “wisdom” itself (Sir 15:3; 24:19-20).

In short, since hunger is the symbol of the need for real food, the Gospel of John states that Jesus alone can satisfy it, being himself “the bread of life” (John 6:35). Christ himself became the “bread of life” for our life, to give us his life which is eternal. So that whoever eats of it will never die but will live forever. In the most Holy Eucharist, he gives us the “source and summit of all our Christian life”[3]. 

It is in this spirit, that the B.O.L. foundation will strive to provide food to the indigent and give a witness to the “domestic church in action”.

Material Food, of course, is not an end in itself. Food is consumed for nutrition. Instead of focusing attention on the commodity, one can look at the objective for which food is consumed, that is providing nutrition for the body. The purpose of nutrition itself is not just to survive, but to lead a healthy and meaningful life – to be in the state one wants to be (well-being) and to do various things one wants to do[4].

[1] United Nation, WFP, Food Security Atlas of RURAL MAHARASHTRA 2010, Introduction, Page 5.

[2] Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical, 27. 

[3] Lumen Gentium, 11.

[4] United Nation, WFP, Food Security Atlas of RURAL MAHARASHTRA 2010, Chapter 1.1.