17 November 1990
Rome, Italy

One could say that satisfying hunger in its many forms is the principal role of every Religious Community in the Church. The word hunger evokes in our minds the distress and pain, which those experience whose bodies are starved, deprived or undernourished because there is no food to hand.

There are, however, other forms of human hunger to whose alleviation Religious Communities all over the world dedicate themselves. There is the hunger for God, the hunger for Christ, the hunger for truth, the hunger for justice, the hunger for acceptance. With each of these forms of human hunger Religious Communities are concerned. Enriched by a wide variety of charisms by the Holy Spirit, Religious Communities pledge themselves to alleviate all forms of human hunger after the manner of Christ Himself, Who manifested practical compassion for the hunger that gnaws at the human heart, the human mind and the human body.

For our present purposes we focus on the pain and problem of the millions who see the sun rise and set without having swallowed a mouthful of sustaining food. Let me quote from a work of Arthur Simon: "Imagine ten children at a table dividing up food. The three healthiest load their plates with large portions, including most of the meat, fish, milk and eggs. They eat what they want and discard the leftovers. Two other children get just enough to meet their basic requirements. The remaining five are left wanting. Three of them--sickly, nervous, apathetic children--manage to stave off the feeling of hunger by filling up on bread and rice. The other two cannot do even that. One dies from dysentery and the second from pneumonia, which they are too weak to ward off. These children represent the human family...." (Arthur Simon, Bread for the World, New York, Paulist Press, 1975, p. 14).

Religious Communities must be considered as sitting among the three healthiest children, for Religious Communities have in the main adequate nourishment to sustain them in their work. It is right that it should be so. The role of Religious Communities is not to place themselves in such a condition that they would become "sickly, nervous and apathetic children of God." Rather their role is to alert their companions, who are close to them, about the condition of those further down the table who have little or nothing to eat: those who are sitting below the salt. Their role is not only to alert others about the phenomenon of an unequal distribution of wealth and food in the world, but to rise from the table and to the best of their ability provide for and serve those whose hunger is only too obvious from the lines which the pangs of hunger have traced in their faces.

To the problem of hunger in the world there is a theological and scriptural dimension. Any solution to the problem of hunger which would ignore this dimension will inevitably be short-term and inadequate. Men and women live, not only by bread but also by the word of God. (cf. Mt 4:4). Religious Communities are well-placed to present and explain this particular dimension to the problem of alleviating hunger. In the history of the Church Religious Orders and Congregations have shown themselves to be particularly aware of the centrality for Christian lives of chapter 25 of St. Matthew's Gospel: "I was hungry and you gave me food." (Mt 25:35).

At the level of social communications Religious Communities are strategically placed to sensitize people to the problem of hunger. Many Orders and Congregations have an international and missionary character, so that the problem of hunger that exists in a third world country, is often graphically brought home to a first-world country by returning missionaries. Through personal contacts and through appeals for funds in religious bulletins, a process of awakening people's consciences to the claims of justice and charity is continually taking place. Among Christians, who has not listened to and been moved by some returned missionary, as he or she spoke of vast areas of other continents where the breaking of the word of God goes hand in hand literally with the breaking of bread to fill empty stomachs? Every Religious Community has as an ideal, that which was proposed by Vatican II in its decree, Ad Gentes, namely, it tries to "expand the range of its charity to the ends of the earth and to have the same concerns for those who are far away as for its members." (p37).

The role of the Religious Community in sensitizing the world to the problem of hunger could be said to be carried out on two levels; first, at the level of information and education. Information: Religious Communities have through their members first-hand information about the reality of hunger in the world. It is information which can be and frequently is shared. Education: Religious Communities are, particularly through their apostolates of education, well-placed to open the minds of people to the seminal ideas contained in Paul VI's document, Populorum Progressio, and in the numerous appeals which Pope John Paul II has made on behalf of the hungry millions who are forced today to exist rather than to live.