GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD!

Some things pass our sight less noticed unless they directly or indirectly influence our welfare. For instance, one would go for medicine unless in need of prevention or cure of some illness without which would assume that they do exist.

Way back when there was the introduction of the new safety gadgets in the public service vehicles, there arose a major breakdown in the transport and communication sector in Kenya. Majority of the Kenyans came to realize the importance of transport sector in the society. This affected many Kenyans who earned the dictum, ‘the walking and working nation’ just to make the ends meet. Which types of ends do meet under such a tough and rigorous conditions. Most likely to satisfy the needs of the body.

Then dawns the big global issue of hunger in the pursuit to make the ends meet, to satisfy the bodily needs. Fundamentally, food is one of the basic human rights but yet the global numbers of hunger victims grow in large number day in day out. Many people live below the poverty line. In fact according to the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), more than 852 million people which is roughly 13% of the world’s population sleep hungry if not having enough to eat in a day so as to sustain a healthy lifestyle.

Eradication of poverty, through human literacy, in an attempt to reduce hunger in the universe has been one of the objectives of the sovereign nations. Even Kenya has a take on it to salvage the environment. This is the sole reason for the World Food Day to which Koffi Annan, the Secretary General to the United Nation by then, said, “the world has enough resources and the know- how to make hunger history. What we need is political will and resolve”.

The Church too is not left behind in this fight. During one of the traditional Angelus addressed by the Pope Benedict XVI in November, spoke of more than 800 million of people who suffer hunger and termed it a global scourge. Hunger is one of the many subject matters in the Church today. The latter in deed is also aware of this calamity that has visited the humanity, which not only spread through the African continent but also navigates Asia amid few places all over the world.

Christ’s epoch was not forgotten by this challenge of hunger for food. Indeed this challenge has made part of the human culture, let alone the Israelites in the desert who grumbled at God and Moses. They were faced with the hunger scourge yet God fed them with bread from heaven, giving them strength to reach the land full of honey and milk, Canaan. Christ also faced with pity on those who followed him, during various occasions; felt the need to not only feed them spiritually but also materially. He showed a perfect sign of concern to the hungry and reawakened the body by feeding it with five loafs of breed and two fish, for the soul may be willing but the flesh might be week. This shows our total dependence on the one who provides for our daily physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs. We should not be worried “about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and what you are to wear.”

Imagine the Eucharistic celebration devoid of the Lord’s Prayer. No, unimaginable! For sure it will cease to be the Lord’s Supper, for this would be unfinished business in the sacrifice that the Son of man, not only personally inaugurated by giving us His body and blood to partake on as a means of our sanctification, but also taught us this noble prayer; “…give us this day our daily bread,” which make part of the Sacramental celebration. Through the Eucharist, we are assured of the Divine Providence that is the basis of our daily life.

Just as there are many higher institutions like United Nation, World Food Organization, Food and Agricultural Organization and many more that look after the well-being of a person’s consumption also the Church ensures spiritual health to her children. That the Christian is fed well with the spiritual bread hence do not suffer spiritual malnutrition due to spiritual hunger.

(this article was published in the Seed Magazine)