Our special intention for the month of October is for children who are starving, for those who are deprived of food, love, faith or hope. We invite you to include this intention in your weekly holy hour.
“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” from Matthew 25: 35-36.
The facts :
- Every year 15 million children die of hunger
- Throughout the 1990's more than 100 million children died from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could have be prevented for the price of what the world spends on its military in two days!
- One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5 (Report in United Nations Food and Agriculture)
- One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night.
- Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide.
- About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age
- Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger
- It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, about 100 times as many as those who actually die from it each year.
The Saint :
Some words of love from Blessed Teresa of Calcutta :
"When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed."
"It's the greatest poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you.”
“Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat . . . We must find each other.”
“Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat . . . We must find each other.”
“There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives - the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family. Find them. Love them.”
"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread."
Hunger for Jesus Christ :
“The most profound deprivation for anyone but especially a child is to be deprived of the gift of faith, of a knowledge and love of Christ. The greatest gift you can offer anyone is the gift of our Catholic faith. There is absolutely nothing more precious than our Catholic faith. This conviction must be the first and permanent motivation behind all teaching of Christian doctrine. Its value to a child is not only temporal but eternal.” (Fr Bede MCGregor OP).
Pope Benedict XVI reminds us how “Jesus identifies himself with those in need, with the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison. ‘as you did it to one of these my brethren, you did it to me'” (Mt 25:40). This Gospel passage demonstrates how “Love of God and love of neighbour have become one: in the least of the brethren we find Jesus himself, and in Jesus we find God.” (Encyclical Deus Caritas Est , God is Love, no. 15)
The Holy Father also writes that it is only through serving our neighbours that our eyes can be opened to what God does for us and how much he loves us: “The saints—consider the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta—constantly renewed their capacity for love of neighbour from their encounter with the Eucharistic Lord, and conversely this encounter acquired its realism and depth in their service to others” (Encyclical Deus Caritas Est , God is Love, no. 18)
Prayer :
