A good time to seek out and help those in need

AT the start of the 40-day period of Lent last Ash Wednesday, Pope Francis narrated the parable of a rich and proud man who wore extravagant clothes and feasted sumptuously every day, while the poor man could only lie at the door of the rich man and feed on the crumbs falling from the rich man’s table.

After they died, the Pope said, the rich man found torment in the afterlife, and asked that the poor man who was in heaven alleviate his suffering with a drop of water. Abraham then told the rich man: During your life, you had your fill of good things, just as Lazarus had his fill of bad. Now he is being comforted here while you are in agony. In the afterlife, the Pope said, a kind of fairness is restored and life’s evils are balanced by good.

At the root of the rich man’s problem, Pope Francis said, was his failure to heed God’s word to help the poor. “When we close our heart to the gift of God’s word,” the Pope said, “we end up closing our heart to the gift of our brothers and sisters.” He called on all to “serve Christ present in our brothers and sisters in need” and share in the campaigns promoted by many Church organizations in various parts of the world.

In Manila, Archbihop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle called on the faithful not only to fast this Lenten season but also to help feed hungry and malnourished children. “Let us deepen our relationship with Him by practicing charity and helping those in need,” he said.

One charitable activity that the Church has been promoting, he said, is Pondo ng Pinoy’s FAST2FEED campaign, which is helping the Hapag-Asa Integrated Nutrition Program. “It only takes for six months — or a day — to nourish a hungry and undernourished child,” Archbishop Tagle said.

Lent is the annual period of Christian observance that precedes Easter. It started last Ash Wednesday, with priests marking the forehead of the faithful with the sign of the cross, and saying, as God told Adam in the Garden of Eden, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” The 40-day period of Lent recalls the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness before starting His ministry.

During Lent, many Christians commit to fasting and abstinence, giving up certain foods or luxuries as a form of penitence. Pope Francis and our own Archbishop Tagle have urged the faithful in this Lenten period of 2019 to do more — to seek out those who need help and give it to them.

Here in Manila, Archbishop Tagle said, they can do it by helping the child feeding program supported by the diocese’s Pondo ng Pinoy. This would make the Lent not only a period of introspection but also a time to do more to help the poor and the needy among us.