Hunger Symposium Eucharist

Side 1

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sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless,
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clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.
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Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be
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healed. Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be
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your rear guard. Then you shall call and the Lord will answer. You shall cry for
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help and he will say, here I am. If you remove from your midst oppression, false
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accusation, and malicious speech, if you bestow your bread on the hungry and
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satisfy the afflicted, then light shall rise for you in the darkness and the
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bloom shall become for you like midday. Then the Lord will guide you always and
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give you plenty even on the parched land. He will renew your strength and you
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shall be like a watered garden, like a spring whose water never fails. This is
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the word of the Lord.
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Today, as we have celebrated our efforts to respond creatively and concretely to Christ's
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call to alleviate hunger and malnutrition, we recognize Mary as a model who responded
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totally to the call of Christ, and we take strength and courage from her.
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As we seek Mary's intercession, we acknowledge that children are one of the largest and most
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sorely afflicted groups suffering from hunger and malnutrition.
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We also realize that children are the long-term hope of the Christian community becoming more
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responsive to the mystery of Christ suffering in our midst.
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To symbolize these realities, a group of children from St. Edward's, Most Blessed Sacrament,
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and Good Shepherd parishes will present a response in gesture to our first reading of
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Isaiah.
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The children have been trained by sisters and students involved in the Sisters' Summer
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program of the Archdiocese.
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The second reading is from the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians.
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Brothers, I should like you to know of the grace of God conferred on the churches of
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Macedonia.
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In the midst of severe trial, their overflowing joy and deep poverty have produced an abundant
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generosity.
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According to their means, indeed, I can testify even beyond their means, and voluntarily,
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they begged us insistently for the favor of sharing in this service to members of the
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Church.
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our hopes they first gave themselves to God and then to us by the will of God.
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You are well acquainted with the favor shown you by our Lord Jesus Christ, how
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for your sake he made himself poor though he was rich so that you might
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become rich by his poverty. I am about to give you some advice on this matter of
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rich and poor. It will help you who began this good work last year not only to carry
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it through, but to do so willingly. Carry it through now to a successful completion
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so that your ready resolve may be matched by giving according to your means. The willingness
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to give should accord with one's means, not go beyond them. The relief of others ought
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not to impoverish you. There should be a certain equality. Your plenty at the present time
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should supply their need, so that their surplus may one day supply your need with equality
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as a result. It is written, he who gathered much had no excess and he who
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gathered little had no lack. This is the word of the Lord.
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Please stand.
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The Lord be with you.
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The Lord be with you.
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A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke.
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Glory to you, O Lord.
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And two disciples told Jesus that same day, the first day of the Sabbath,
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were making their way to a village named Emous,
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seven miles distant from Jerusalem,
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discussing as they went all that they had happened. And in the course of their
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lively exchange Jesus approached and began to walk with them. However they
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were restrained from recognizing him and he said to them what are you discussing
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as you go your way.
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And they halted in distress, and one of them,
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Cleophas by name, asked him,
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Are you the only resident of Jerusalem
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who does not know the things that went on
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in these past few days?
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And he said to them, What things?
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And they said, all those that had to do with Jesus of Nazareth,
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a prophet powerful in word and deed in the eyes of God and all the people,
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how our chief priests and leaders delivered him up to be condemned to death,
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how they crucified him.
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We were hoping that he was the one who would set Israel free.
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Besides all this, today, the third day, those things that happened.
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Some women of our group have just brought such astonishing news.
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They were at the tomb before dawn and failed to find his body,
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but were returned with the tale that they had seen a vision of angels
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who declared that he was alive.
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And some of our number went to the tomb and found it to be just as the women had said,
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but they did not see.
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And then he said to them, what little sense you have.
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How slow you are to believe all that the prophets have announced.
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Did not the Messiah have to undergo all this so as to enter into his glory?
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Beginning then with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted for them every passage of scripture which referred to him.
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By now they were near the village to which they were going, and he acted as if he were going farther.
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and they pressed him,
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Stay with us, it is nearly morning,
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and the day is practically over.
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And so he went in to stay with them.
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And when he had seated himself with them to eat,
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he took bread, pronounced the blessing,
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then broke the bread and began to distribute it to them.
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And with that their eyes were opened,
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and they recognized him,
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whereupon he vanished from their sight.
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And they said to one another,
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Were not our hearts burning inside
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as he talked to us on the road and explained the scriptures to us.
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They got up immediately and returned to Jerusalem where they found the eleven
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and the rest of the company assembled and they greeted them with,
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Lord has been raised it is true he has appeared to Simon and then the two
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recounted what had happened on the road how they had come to know him by the
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breaking of the bread. This is the gospel of the Lord.
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they knew him in the breaking of bread.
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These words are taken from today's gospel.
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
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My brothers and sisters, in the love of the Eucharistic Lord,
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Lord. If the world today were one giant Eucharistic feast, an agape such as the
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early believers celebrated in their pristine Christianity, I am afraid it
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will be one deserving the kind of stinging rebuke Paul directed against
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the Church of Corinth.
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When you hold these meetings, he writes,
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it is not the Lord's Supper that you are eating,
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since when the time comes to eat,
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one person goes hungry
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while another is drunk. Surely,
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you have enough respect for the community of God
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not to make poor people embarrassed.
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For the sad fact is, at the table of life,
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we share most disproportionately indeed.
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Some go hungry.
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Others are besottedly full.
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The quality of the bread we eat is
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according to the wealth or the penury we bring with us to the table and we eat
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only with people of our own kind. We do not, as Paul sorrowfully writes, have
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enough respect for the community of God. We embarrass the poor outrageously and
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And so we do. We have never had it so good. We have never had it so bad either.
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We, people that is, men and women of all races and nations, of all creeds and cultures,
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you and I, and billions of others who are unaware and possibly couldn't care less
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that we are gathered here in the city of brotherly love for this International
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Eucharistic Congress. And good, bad. I use these words in terms of human living, of
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the things that help make us more human or less human, of needless luxury and
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and equally needless destitution,
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of the human spirit and the things that men do to one another
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to debase or ennoble that same spirit.
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This is our world, a world of plenty and want,
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of staggering riches and even more staggering poverty.
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And into this confused and confusing world comes the stranger,
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seeking to pitch his tent among us, Christ, the Eucharistic Lord,
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He who said,
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I have come that they may have life and have it to the full,
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and who still in mystery remains with us in the form of bread to nourish that full life.
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The full life in greater and greater abundance for only a few or for the many.
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Whatever he meant, the Christ that we honor in this Congress deliberately wants us to
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hunger for life and hunger for it mightily with insatiable yearning. And I am not too sure that
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he was speaking principally of a spiritual hunger, a hunger of the soul, not so much of a physical
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a physical hunger, a hunger of the body.
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He was addressing himself to living men and women
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of his time, as he now does to men and women of our time.
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And his message is the same.
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Have life, have it to the full.
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He spoke of life in its unity, its wholeness,
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of the spirit certainly, but the life of the body as well.
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Let us not, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as I firmly believe Christ did not,
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separate the two.
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This is why we can talk of man's hunger for bread, for material bread, in the same breath
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that we talk in this Congress of hunger for the finer things of the spirit.
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Today we look into the enormous problem of world hunger.
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We try to understand its manifold implications for us Christians of the late 20th century.
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And although this Congress is not the instrument for arriving at concrete proposals for the
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resolution of the problem, I am afraid we will be making a mockery of our faith
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if we remained once again merely on the level of words and did not begin to look
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ahead towards individual and corporate action. The modes and possibilities of
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action taken in faith, with faith, are myriad. These we leave to the measure of
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your faith and the breadth of your imagination. Let me, in this brief moment
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then, speak of the kind of people I believe must be involved in the action
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we speak of. These, perforce, are the hungry of the world. The destitute, the famished,
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the powerless. The burden of action is on them. Hunger for bread, for food, for physical
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sustenance, hunger in its worldwide dimensions. This will not be satisfied except by people
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who are hungry. Literally and in every way hungry. And I do not mean only the hundreds
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of millions who are malnourished and starving. I also mean the well fed, the complacent,
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the fed, the complacent, the comfortable.
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These two must be hungry, be made to be hungry
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if world hunger is to be eased at all.
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This is utter nonsense.
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It probably is, but I will say it again.
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Hungry people will not be helped except by themselves and by other hungry people.
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The problem of world hunger will not be solved except by more hunger.
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I use the words hunger and hungry in admittedly ambiguous senses,
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senses, figurative and literal and every other way, and I do so of set purpose.
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We are talking of people and the totality of life. The problem of hunger, when we come
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down to rock bottom reality, is a people problem, and it cannot be adequately solved nor begin
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not be adequately solved nor begin to be solved except in a total life approach.
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Hence the vagueness, the confusion, the complexity. But we must start somewhere.
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I suggest we start where hunger is, where people are. The hungry multitudes, the
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poor that Christ said we will always have with us. I do not presume to speak
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for them, but I have this gut suspicion that even as they stretch forth their
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beggar hands for the crumbs of bread that fall from the groaning tables of
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the economically blessed of this earth, they are paradoxically begging to be
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left alone.
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Leave us alone, I hear them pleading.
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Leave us alone to do our own thinking and striving,
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to do our own fighting even, if fight we must,
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for food for our shrunken bellies.
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Leave us the initiative of action that must be ours,
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even in our beggary.
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And once we have taken that initiative,
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even while we take it,
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then come in with your charity,
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come in with your helping hand.
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Do not degrade us further by feeding us
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and making us feel less human for the very feeding.
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For it is not food alone that we seek.
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We seek food, yes, but we also seek your support, your concern,
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your standing up for our rights to live and die like men,
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not like animals, not as pawns of big government or big business,
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not as mere objects of pity for the conscience-salving giving of people who fatten on our very hunger.
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We ask to share in your bread.
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We ask also to share in the humanity that that bread nourishes,
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In the spirit that enables you to have more and be more.
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For the acid truth is, because we have less, we are less.
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Hard words. Bitter words.
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But only if we believe, starvelings have heads empty of thought.
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simply because they have bellies empty of food.
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Only if we believe the hunger that debases them
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wipes out all their rights to humanness.
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Only if we believe we are indeed more human than they,
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possessed of more rights than they,
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because possessed of more bread.
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For the unadorned truth is, when we talk of hunger for bread,
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for basic essential food, we are really talking of an even more
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primordial and all-encompassing hunger for humanness,
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for all that makes for that humanness,
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a hunger for justice, a hunger for concern, for sharing,
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a hunger for love, for security, for peace,
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a hunger for the dignity of God's people.
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God's people.
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Your own Declaration of Independence, the Bicentennial of which you celebrate this year,
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says the same thing in a different way.
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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed
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by their creator with certain inalienable rights,
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that among these are life, liberty,
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and the pursuit of happiness.
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Parenthetically, I would like to insert here
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a question one of my American missionaries
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back in the Philippines wrote to me to be posed to you.
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He asks,
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Do Americans still believe in these words?
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And do they believe they apply to all men or just to themselves?
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From the observable operations of American-based corporations in the Philippines,
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he says he doubts the words apply to the people of the Third World.
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I wonder if you share his doubt and the concern behind that doubt.
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In any case, the above words of your Declaration of Independence force us to confront not only
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the economics of hunger, but also the politics, something the Church in general avoids like
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the plague.
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Too often has man's hunger for bread and the terrible suffering that goes with it been
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made a plating of politics, local and international.
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Too often has development, the supposedly sure-fire panacea for hunger, only meant undevelopment,
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more suffering, more hunger.
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all too often as foreign aid to developing nations meant dehumanization, the manipulation
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of suffering for the advantage and gain of the strong, the exploitation of the hungry
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in economics they call them cheap labor for the production and enjoyment of wealth other
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other than by the hungry producers themselves.
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I am not merely parroting here
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the angry tyrants of leftist zealots
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who put the blame for all the world's ills
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on the unmitigated evil that they say
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the capitalistic system is.
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I can cite very concrete cases,
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and not just cases,
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But flesh and blood people like you in our God-forsaken Bukidnon in the Philippines,
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in parishes and villages like Kiyokong, Pangantukan, Pontian, places you will never hear of again,
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people you will never meet in the flesh.
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Second-class citizens, these people in their own native land, reckoned of less worth to
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encumber the earth than cattle and pineapples and sugarcane. These things are dollar earners
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in the all-important export trade to the First World, of paramount money value in the predetermined
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monolithic march towards progress, and progress as defined by the interests of big, multinational
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big multinational businesses.
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But the people, they are only means towards that progress.
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Expendable, cheap.
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Others luxuriate in the fruits of their labor.
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But they, they starve.
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Sighting these cases, I do not by any means extrapolate from a few isolated instances
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to an overgeneralized and therefore false worldwide condition.
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What we hear and observe happening in other countries of Southeast Asia, of Africa and
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South America are depressingly, distressingly familiar to us who have to try to make the
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gospel meaningful in a world of deadening oppression, in a world of demeaning hungers.
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The picture is dark indeed, and we discern nothing in it but scheming and selfishness,
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manipulation and exploitation of men by men. And the implication is it is the
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rich and materially well-off individuals and classes and nations that are
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scheming and selfish, manipulating and exploiting, sheerly because power is on
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their side. But we also know that the suffering poor, the hungry and starving,
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the weak of this world, they too can be just as selfish, just as exploitative and oppressive.
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And admitting this, we can only despair. The problem is too vast, too complicated,
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too impersonal. The structures of greed and injustice too overpowering. And yet,
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despair is not the Christian response. It cannot be. In this spirit-sapping gloom,
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hope all of a sudden becomes the imperative, operative virtue, the hub around which we must
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move and be as Christians, as Church.
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This is the end of side one.
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To hear side two, turn the cassette over now.

Side 2

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From hope as our anchor point, we can look at world hunger and we can act.
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So the problem is too vast.
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We narrow it down.
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It is too complicated.
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We simplify it somewhat.
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It is too impersonal.
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We make it deeply personal.
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And the structures of greed and injustice are too overpowering.
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Structures and systems are made up of people, are fundamentally then problems of people.
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We go to them, these people, in hope, with hope.
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We go to them as brother to brother, as sister to sister.
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We help them to help themselves, to strengthen themselves, to decide and act for themselves.
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In short, we held them to be more human, not in a condescending paternalistic manner, but
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with genuine regard for their God-given dignity.
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This is doing Christianity.
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Only in this doing can we begin to hope.
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Only with this doing can we begin to overcome.
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I say begin, because our human striving will be futile without Him who is the full life.
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In man's hunger for bread, Christ in the Eucharist does matter.
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The disciples at Emmaus recognized him in the breaking of bread, in the sharing of food
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with him, the stranger they made welcome in Oriental hospitality.
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We must recognize him too, this stranger in our midst.
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We must bring him in into our councils, into our hearts, and we must break bread with him
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in his people.
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But we must first be hungry ourselves and recognize the hunger in our fellow men, strangers
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to perhaps, but totally, Christ.
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I was hungry and you gave me food.
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I was thirsty and you gave me drink.
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I was a stranger and you made me welcome.
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This is why I say, only the hungry can feed the hungry.
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and hunger must feed hunger.
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In the inmost depths of that hunger is Christ our life.
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May He, the bread of the world, feed your hunger and mine.
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
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At the end of each petition, I shall pause momentarily for silent prayer before saying,
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let us pray to the Lord, to which you respond, Lord, may we come to know you in the breaking
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of the bread.
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For all who profess the name of Christian, that we learn to experience more deeply the
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presence of Christ among us as we break the bread of God's material blessings
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with those in need.
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For Christians as individuals and as groups around the globe that we have the
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courage to act for justice in eradicating hunger and malnutrition
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throughout the world, let us pray to the Lord.
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Lord, may we come to know you in the breaking of the bread.
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For our local churches, that we come to realize more fully that we are the body
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of Christ lived in our local communities, ministering as Christ to the needy among us,
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let us pray to the Lord.
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For all our needy brothers and sisters throughout the world that through self-help and corporate
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action all achieve a better standard of living and be forever free from the threat of hunger,
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let us pray to the Lord.
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For all God's people that in our sharing of the good news of Christ risen we
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witness to an effective concern for the mystery of Christ's suffering in our
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world let us pray to the Lord.
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Amen.
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Heavenly Father, we have prayed for you our peace.
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We join with them in peace for our brothers and sisters around the world.
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We ask you to receive them through Christ our Lord.
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To symbolize the Christian community's response to malnutrition locally and starvation internationally,
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especially as manifested through the Eucharistic Congress-sponsored Lent Initiative Operation
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We have a participant in the operatory procession, Monsignor Robert Paul of Allentown, in whose
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parish Rice Bowl originated.
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He is joined by the Edward Miller family, symbolizing the more than one million families
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who prayed together around the family table, ate less, and shared their savings with the
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their savings with the need, 25% of which
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will go to local initiatives against malnutrition.
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Sister Anastasia, together with Mrs. Miller,
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are responsible for such initiatives.
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Their office administers food distribution centers
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of the Cargill Commission, nutrition education programs,
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and other initiatives that will benefit by such funding.
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Mother Teresa of Calcutta represents the Christian community's concern for the mystery of Christ's suffering in the world.
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They are joined by the children of the liturgical gesture group, who symbolize for us the gift of life we all have as we attempt to gratefully acknowledge God's goodness and offer ourselves to the Father.
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And so, Father, we bring you these gifts.
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We ask you to make them holy by the power of your spirit,
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that they may become the body and blood of your Son,
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our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose command we celebrate this Eucharist.
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On the night he was betrayed, he took bread and gave you thanks and praise.
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He broke the bread and gave you thanks and praise.
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thanks and praise. He broke the bread, gave it to his disciples and said,
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Take this all of you and eat it. This is my body which will be given up for you.
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When supper was ended he took the cup again he gave you thanks and praise, gave
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He gave the cup to his disciples and said,
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take this all of you and drink from it.
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This is the cup of my blood,
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the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.
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It will be shed for you and for all men
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so that sins may be forgiven.
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Do this in memory of me.
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This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
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Happy are those who are called to His supper.
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May the body of Christ bring me to everlasting life.
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Amen.
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Oh, satisfy the hungry heart with gifts of finest wheat.
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Come give to us, O saving Lord, the bread of life to feed.
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That's when the shepherd calls his sheep.
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They know and it is good.
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So when you call your family, Lord, we follow and rejoice.
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You satisfy the hungry hearts with gifts of highest glee.
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He brought it to us, O Saving Lord,
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A bread of life to feed.
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Be joyful, ladies, this sings to you
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Of praise and gratitude
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That Christian found us worthy lords.
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To share His heavenly food.
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Satisfy the hungry heart with gifts of finest wheat.
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Offer Him to us, O saving Lord, the bread of life to eat.
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He's got the power, request and share.
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The blood of Christ can't pour.
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In a one cup, one loaf, we bear
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Our warm and sinful core.
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You satisfy the hungry heart
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With gifts of finest wheat, a gift to us all,
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saving for a bread of life to eat.
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No mystery of your presence, Lord,
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your voice of dark and sad.
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All the world can at last see,
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All see the high school girl.
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You satisfy the hungry heart
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With games of fine and sweet.
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Come into our small saving floor,
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The bread of life we bring.
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You give yourself to us, O Lord,
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Then selfless were those feet
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To serve each other in your name
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In truth and charity
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You satisfy the hungry heart
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This day is as fine and sweet as the gift to us of a saving force, the bread of life to me.
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Lord, you have affectioned us with one breath and one cup.
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Help us foster our love and affection.
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strangers and all those in need, that we may be united one day with all those people in the land of the living.
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We ask this through Christ our Lord.
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Amen.
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The Lord be with you.
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And also with you.
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The Father of Mercies has given us the example
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of unselfish love in the sufferings of his only Son.
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Through your service to God, Lord and Maker, may you receive His countless blessings.
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You believe that by His dying, Christ has destroyed death forever. May He give you everlasting life.
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Be humble to Himself in the last days. May you follow His example and share in His resurrection.
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May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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Let us go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
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Thank you, God.