Feed the Hungry

“If you bestow your bread on the hungry ​and satisfy the afflicted; Then light shall rise for you in the darkness…” Isaiah 58:7-8

Here in the Philippines, it is easy to find people who are hungry. We can feed them through contributing to the many organizations and foundations set up for just this purpose. Of course there are many roaming the streets in Manila and the provinces, and we do not need to look far. Just across our subdivision, there are informal settlers. Some have jobs, but a lot live from hand to mouth. I know a group of people who have been feeding people who are street dwellers. They find carinderias to provide one hot meal for P40, and kind hearted people who are willing to pay P1,200.00 to feed one person for a month. 

My family used to attend a prayer meeting in the Santuario de San Vicente de Paúl along Tandang Sora Avenue several years ago. When I read about the Saint the church was named for, I learned that he dedicated himself to serve the poor, especially the imprisoned galley slaves in Paris. Although he came from a poor peasant family himself, his education was provided for by the Franciscans, and he studied Theology in the University of Toulouse. 

He became a priest, but while traveling from Marseille to Narbone, he was captured and sold as a slave in Tunis. He was able to escape after two years and passionately continued to serve the poor, to preach and to evangelize. He founded hospitals, and established the Daughters of Charity, and the Vincentians to help in the overwhelming and demanding work. Like Mother Teresa of Calcutta, he found God in the poor. He said, “Go to the poor, and you will find God.” He also said we must be full reservoirs “in order to let our water spill out without becoming empty…no one can give what he does not have.”