How can it be that even today there are still people dying of hunger? …Christians must learn to make their act of faith in Christ by discerning His voice in the cry for help that rises from this world of poverty. (Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, no. 50, Jan. 2001)
This probing question from Pope John Paul II in his document “at the beginning of the new millennium” was uttered nearly a decade ago, yet it echoes a prophetic call to both feed the hungry and address the root causes of hunger in the world that extends back to the Jewish prophets over 2500 years ago:
This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: … Sharing your bread with the hungry … and not turning your back on your own…If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted, then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday. (Isaiah 58: 6a, 7a, 7d, 10)
The New Testament echoes the Christian community’s embracing this prophetic stance:
Jesus said to them, “Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise.” (Luke 3: 11)
If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is that? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2: 15-17)
The early Church Fathers even claimed that feeding the hungry was a matter of justice:
Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs. (St. John Chrystostom)
More than performing works of mercy, we are paying a debt of justice. (St. Gregory the Great)
The Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World used blunt language to highlight hunger as a moral tragedy of our time:
People hounded by hunger call upon those better off…Since there are so many people prostrate with hunger in the world, this sacred council urges all, both individuals and governments, to remember the aphorism of the Fathers, “Feed the man dying of hunger, because if you have not fed him, you have killed him.” (Gaudium et Spes, 9. & 61, emphasis added)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§ 2831) links the Lord’s Prayer with our call as Christians to be actively engaged in alleviating the problem of hunger in the world:
But the presence of those who hunger because they lack bread opens up another profound meaning of this petition