A Lenten fast acceptable to the Lord

Monday, March 31, 2025

*Tony Magliano - Freelance columnist

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The prophet Isaiah boldly challenges us to choose the way of fasting most acceptable to the Lord: “Releasing those bound unjustly... setting free the oppressed... sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless, clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.”

If we honestly examine our conscience - a healthy Lenten exercise - many of us will come to the conclusion that we can do more - probably much more - to share our bread with the hungry, shelter the homeless and set the oppressed free.

Excellent organizations like Catholic Relief Services (www.crs.org) and Bread for the World (www.bread.org) can help us improve our outreach.

In his social justice encyclical letter Populorum Progressio (“On the Development of Peoples”) St. Pope Paul VI boldly wrote, “Let each one examine his conscience, a conscience that conveys a new message for our times. Is he prepared to support out of his own pocket works and undertakings organized in favor of the most destitute? Is he ready to pay higher taxes so that the public authorities can intensify their efforts in favor of development?”

Increasing taxes, even for the destitute, is a tough sell anytime, especially during these difficult days. Yet, to the contrary U.S. President Donald Trump is moving to cut taxes - especially for the rich.

The moral obligation to assist the vulnerable and poor to the best of our ability is not only an individual duty, but is also a serious obligation for the nation, and the nation’s government.

Here St. Pope Paul continues, “The same duty of solidarity that rests on individuals exists also for nations: ‘Advanced nations have a very heavy obligation to help the developing peoples.’”

Despite the Catholic Church’s teachings which place the highest priority upon governments’ moral responsibly to ensure that adequate aid is appropriated to meet the needs of the poor and hungry, economically advanced nations continue to provide only a very small percentage of their annual budgets to life-saving, life enhancing projects which help the earth’s poorest people.

And to make matters even worse, the Trump administration has frozen virtually all government funding for international poverty-focused foreign assistance, thus causing enormous preventable suffering for millions of desperately poor brothers and sisters. Please respond to this legislative alert https://support.crs.org/act/foreign-aid-operations?ms=mamcrs0225app00fea00).

Furthermore, the Trump administration also issued an order to freeze federal aid to domestic nonprofit poverty-focused organizations like the 168 Catholic Charities agencies throughout the U.S. Please also respond to this alert Catholic Charities USA urges reconsideration of freeze on aid for nonprofit service organizations

James Morris, former executive director of the United Nations World Food Program, told a gathering in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis that about 18,000 children in the world die every single day from hunger and hunger-related diseases. And he added, “That doesn’t have to be.”

He said if about $7 billion a year was put towards ending child hunger, it would end! No one, absolutely no one, should have to suffer from hunger. And wealthy nations - even the U.S. alone - could end this scourge upon so much of humanity. But we lack the one remaining ingredient: the will to do so.

But can’t we at least feed every child?

Can’t we at least muster-up enough compassion to demand that governments divert the relatively tiny amount of $7 billion from bloated military budgets, to end child hunger worldwide?

Of course we can. The question is: Will we?

Pope Francis has regularly chastised wealthy nations’ lack of compassion as a major contributor to our global “culture of indifference.” And the prophet Isaiah supplies the remedy: “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!”