Time for a quick quiz: Can you name all seven of the Corporal Works of Mercy? See if you can list them all.
Next week I will check back in and see how you performed on that little test. For now, let me help you out with the first one:
“Feed the Hungry”
At the Karidat food bank, we spend a lot of time thinking about how best to go about doing that. Who are the “hungry”? And how best do we go about “feeding” them?
Actually, the answer to those two questions are not as easy as you might think. The thing is, when you ask those questions, they just bring up a host more:
Are the people who ask for food the ones who are truly suffering from hunger? Are there others on our island, maybe in plain sight, who are hungry but who would never ask? How do we find practical ways to prioritize feeding the very hungry over feeding the only somewhat hungry?
That brings us right back to the question: Who are the truly hungry among us?
As to the second one, about how best to feed people who are hungry…well, that’s a tough one, too. Should we hand out bags of food, or deliver door-to-door? Should we have a limit on how much a single individual or household can receive per month? Should we give food products or grocery vouchers?
Of course, at Karidat we do not allow ourselves to get bogged down in thinking, overthinking, and asking endless questions. Over in our little Chalan Piao office we are already actively invested in doing the work of feeding hungry people, even if we are not always quite sure that we are going about it in the most absolutely perfect way.
After all, the requirements of the works of mercy is to do go out and do them. It is not required that we do them perfectly or without occasional errors, and that is very important to remember! Do not forget that, as you continue to serve the hungry in your own way.
Yes, mistakes are unavoidable. But it would be a much bigger mistake NOT to feed the hungry.
Every day, people all over Saipan, Tinian and Rota are out doing the work of feeding the hungry and completing other works of mercy. Karidat has its approach, and others have their own. Most of you are doing it quietly and no one else even notices your good deeds. The important thing is not to forget to actively work and spread mercy.
So now that we have got some basics down about how important it is to invest in the corporal acts of mercy, let’s back up just a step and the big “Why” question: Why feed the hungry? And that question really is a bit easier to answer:
Because everyone needs to eat in order to live, and so it is about helping others to live.
Because it is good for our souls to share what we have and not to hoard, so that we actively remember that it is God who gives us everything that we have.
And finally, because desperation for food serves as s a mirror of the human desperation for God. Or, as Mahatma Gandhi put it, “There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”
(Karidat runs a modest food pantry which serves several hundred individuals and families every month. It is not open every day so be sure to call ahead of time, 234-6981.)