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Rector’s Reflection: Blessed Are the Hungry Now
Dear saints:
These are trying days for the most vulnerable among us.
Applications for our Small Grants Program are due today, and when the Outreach Committee meets on December 3 to review those applications, we will be especially cognizant of Jesus’ words from last Sunday’s reading from Luke: “Blessed are the hungry now.”
With the U.S. government closed, many of our neighbors stand in food pantry lines, wondering how they will feed themselves and their children with funding for the SNAP program — our country’s largest source of food assistance — tangled up in the gears of an unforgiving political stalemate. It is heartbreaking that in the wealthiest nation in history, so many of God’s beloved children live with food insecurity. I have to believe that breaks God’s heart.
This is a time for discipleship, to show that we live the Gospel and don’t just talk about the Gospel. Indeed, many of you have asked about ways that we can help people facing the possible loss or reduction of critical food assistance benefits.
In Luke, Jesus, born in straw poverty, preached the Beatitudes to weary, sick and hungry people who met him on a wind-swept plain on the long road to Jerusalem. He looked at them with compassion and called them blessed.
“Blessed are the hungry now,” he proclaimed.
Blessed. Not tomorrow. Not when the next federal budget passes or when the next election comes. Now! This is the holy urgency of the Gospel.
Our baptismal vows call us to walk that same road, arm in arm, carrying the lantern of Christ’s defiant hope into the darkness. Scripture tells us again and again – 2,100 times, actually — that the poor are not to be ignored. The only time Christ is judgmental is on subject of the poor. “Woe,” he warns, to those who look away in comfort and security while their neighbors’ empty stomachs growl.
This is not your new rector getting “political”; this is Gospel truth. It is the witness of Matthew 25, where the question is asked: “Lord, when did we see you hungry…and not minister to you?”
As I write this, the funding for SNAP benefits for millions of people around our country, and about 360,000 people here in Connecticut, is still uncertain.
If you are wondering how to act in this moment:
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Donate to St. Francis' Connecticut Foodshare fundraiser..
- Volunteer at local food pantries and hunger programs.
- Call or email your elected representatives in Congress.
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Push back against cruel stereotypes that further rob struggling people of their humanity and dignity. For example, despite what many TV news reports show, most people receiving government food assistance are white, U.S.-born citizens. What's more, 86 percent of all SNAP benefits go to households that include a child, elderly person, or person with disabilities.
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Continue to pray. Pray the “daily bread” of the Lord’s Prayer. Before bed, pray the “Keep Watch” prayer I shared last week. Then let that prayer become action.
Let your faith become bread for another. And push back against the darkness until Heaven breaks through.
For when we act in love, my friends, we become the miracle God is waiting to send.
Faithfully,
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