What if World Food Day Was a Holy Day?

World Food Day is not a holy day of obligation or even on the church’s calendar. It is an ordinary day of ordinary time. But what if it was—or, even if not designated as a holy day by the church, then one of those days like Thanksgiving, that don’t appear on the liturgical calendar, but on which we feel drawn to come together in prayer and worship? How would we celebrate?

Certainly, we would pray for the hungry people of this world and this country. There are many to pray for. On World Food Day 2020, over two billion people in the world don’t have regular access to safe, nutritious, sufficient food. Hunger has surged along with the global pandemic: the United Nations World Food Program estimates that the effects of the pandemic could more than double the number of people experiencing life-threatening levels of food insecurity this year.  Here at home, Philadelphia still ranks in the top ten poorest and most food-insecure cities in the United States. 

If World Food Day was a holy day, what Scriptures would we open? Perhaps last Sunday’s first reading from the prophet Isaiah, which imagined the salvation God promises as a banquet of  rich foods and choice wines. Perhaps the stories of manna from heaven that fed Israel in the desert, of the meals that Jesus shared with Pharisees and tax collectors both and with crowds on hillsides and alone with his disciples. Our Scriptures often use the language of hunger and of being fed to speak of our relationship with God. 

Scripture also calls us to examine our consciences, warning us that feeding the hungry is first among the criteria by which the righteous are judged before the Lord. There is something wrong—something sinful—that unsatisfied hunger is so ordinary an experience in our city and world.

If World Food Day were a holy day, then after breaking open the Scriptures and our hearts before God, we could turn to that shared meal, the Eucharist, in which we encounter Christ’s enduring, transforming presence. 

The first and still the best book I ever read about the Eucharist is Monika Hellwig’s The Eucharist and the Hunger of the World.  In it, she points out that the most reliable sign of the presence of the risen Christ, as reported in the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul, is the restructuring of a community’s relationships. Paul is particularly insistent on this point, shaming those Corinthians who treat the rich and the poor differently at the Lord’s table. The Eucharist we share is not food for us alone. It’s a blessing that’s meant to satisfy all the hungers of the world.

After breaking bread together,  we would leave—we would “go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”  And what then? What can people of faith do on World Food Day 2020 to serve the Lord, to transform relationships in our community, and to feed the hungry? 

Some suggestions: You can text the keyword FFF to 215-923-7151 to help Old St. Joseph’s Faith Food and Friends provide three nutritious take-away meals a week to our hungry neighbors. You can call or email Senator Patrick Toomey and Senator Robert Casey, urging the US Senate to act on a COVID relief bill that extends the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits during the pandemic (find out how to contact them at contactsenators.com) You can become a regular supporter of anti-hunger organizations like Bread for the World (bread.org) or Catholic Relief Services (crs.org).

This month, the United Nations World Food Program, which is the largest humanitarian organization addressing hunger and promoting food security internationally, received the Nobel Peace Prize “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.” It is good that the Nobel Prize committee recognized their critically important work—but as followers of Christ, we know that feeding the hungry is not something prize-worthy. It’s an ordinary way of allowing the Word and sacrament that have changed us to change the world.
—BJ Brown