WHAT MUST WE DO?
In spite of all the information that the communication media offers us, it’s hard to be aware that we’re living in a kind of «island of abundance», in the middle of a world in which more than a third of humanity lives in extreme poverty. However, it suffices to fly a few hours in any direction to encounter hunger and destruction.
This situation has only one name: injustice. And it only has one explanation: thoughtlessness. How to not feel humane when just a few miles from us –after all, what are 5,000 miles?– there are human beings who don’t have any house or land; men and women who spend the day looking for something to eat; children who won’t be able to overcome malnutrition?
Our first reaction tends to be almost always the same: «but what can I do in the face of so much extreme poverty?» While we’re asking questions like this we feel more or less calm. Then along come the eternal rationalizations: it’s not easy to set up a more just international order; you have to respect the autonomy of each country; it’s hard to secure efficient channels of distributing food, much less mobilize a country to get out of poverty.
But all this disappears when we hear a direct, clear and practical answer that comes from the Baptist when they ask what they ought to do to «prepare the way to the Lord». The prophet of the desert answers them with inspired simplicity: «Whoever has two shirts must give one to the man who has none, and whoever has food must share it».
Here dissipate all our theories and rationalizations: What can we do? Simply don’t hoard more than what we need while there are peoples who need it to live. Don’t keep developing without limit our welfare, forgetting those who are dying of hunger. True progress doesn’t consist in a minority reaching a greater and greater material welfare, but in the whole humanity living with more dignity and less suffering.
A few years ago I was in Butare (Rwanda) for Christmas, giving a course in Christology to Spanish missionaries. One morning a Navarra religious arrived saying that when she left her house, she had encountered a child dying of hunger. They could verify that the child had no serious sickness, except malnutrition. The child was one more of so many Rwandan orphans who struggle each day to survive. I remember that I only thought of one thing. I’ll never forget it: can we Christian of the West welcome the child of Bethlehem with singing, while we close our hearts to these children of the Third World?
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
