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StCharlesChurch.org > Faith Resources > Lent

Lenten Speakers 2005

"Hunger in America" by Rachel Lustig
"Suffering and the Hunger for Meaning" by Jean Sweeney

Hunger in America

By Rachel Lustig, Catholic Charities USA


Rachel Lustig is Associate for Parish Social Ministry at Catholic Charities USA, where she coordinates the Parish Social Ministry Training Project. She provides social ministry resources to Catholic Charities agencies and works with the Parish Social Ministry Section, a professional interest group of individuals involved in social justice and outreach ministries in their local parishes.

Prior to her work at Catholic Charities USA, Rachel was Director of Finance at Hogar Santa Cruz, a home for abused and abandoned children run by the Holy Cross Congregation in Santiago, Chile, through the Holy Cross Associate Program. Rachel received a B.A. of Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame.

This is an outline of the talk given at St. Charles on February 15, 2005
as part of the Lenten Supper Speakers Series

Hunger in America is not the image that comes to mind when one brings to mind images of starving people - hunger in America is often hidden.

In 2001, the number of Americans who were food insecure, or hungry or at risk of hunger, was 33.6 million, a rise over 2000, when 33.2 million Americans were food insecure. The number of individuals who are suffering from hunger rose from 8.5 million in 2000 to 9 million in 2001.

What are the issues concerning hunger and the U.S.?

1. Being hungry in the U.S. means having to take tough choices.
a. Food or utilities or housing or health care

2. Children don't have enough to eat.

3. Rural areas do not have access to services, and often basic needs.

4. The elderly population continues to grow and is having to deal with this scenario.

What can we do about it?
This problem cannot be solved by a single individual.

1. Unite with other people of faith.
2. Get informed
3. Raise Awareness
4. Donate
5. Volunteer at your local food pantry.
6. Organize for a food pantry: like St. Charles' pantry.

What we are about is making it a little easier "for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do."
~ Dorothy Day

Suffering and the Hunger for Meaning

By Jean Sweeney, Pastoral Counselor, St. Charles

Jean Sweeney at the Lenten Soup Supper Series
Jean Sweeney addresses the audience on suffering
and the hunger for meaning.

In our sleep,
pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop
          upon the heart
until
          in our own despair,
          against our will,
          comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.

Aeschylus, Greek dramatist
Rephrased by Mary Russell, The Sparrow.


THERE IS A BROKENESS

There is a brokenness
Out of which comes the unbroken,
A shatteredness out
Of which blooms the unshatterable.

There is a sorrow
Beyond all grief which leads to joy
And a fragility
Out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space
Too vast for words
Through which we pass with each loss,
Out of whose darkness
We are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound
Whose serrated edges cut the heart
As we break open
To the place inside which is unbreakable
And whole,
While learning to sing.

—Rashani

I. Lent is a good time to reflect/rethink on our theology of suffering.
Our culture flees from pain/sickness/dying. We are a Resurrection people of Christ, but our tradition is the only one to have the bloody Jesus on the cross. One thing this says to us is Jesus knows the life of suffering. He emptied himself of God (Philippians) and became one of us. Then he lived in union with God, faced the consequences of his life of truth and love out of that union, and "stayed in dialogue" with God even in what felt like abandonment. ""Why oh Why have you abandoned me, O God?" His faithfulness to God in the midst of his pain brought life to all of us.

II. No one has figured out the meaning of suffering, many have grappled with this for ages.
 A too facile answer puts us off. Great biblical wisdom: The story of Job's losses- a just and good man loses home, work, family and health and reject's his friends images of God and their numerous suggestions that he is to blame or being punished, that God is testing him, that he doesn't know God. Job insists on hearing from God directly. He keeps his dialogue with God going. And the answer comes (there is no answer!) in the great poetic words "Where were you when I created...."
There are limits to our understanding. Job comes out of his experience with a sense of the experience of God, the presence of God. (Read the whole story and epilogue).

III. Different Responses to Suffering.

  1. Loss of Faith. (Haiti, dying children experience)
    Seeing the redeeming Christ in the innocent children.
  2. Action for others - money, time, new ministry for others out of
    one's own pain.
  3. Staying in Dialogue with God through out the doubts.
  4. Practice - Buddhist/Catholic way:
    a) Some personal suffering happens.
    Response: This is what is.
    b) Other people feel like this. ( get out of the self-center
    and into solidarity with others). Bless me and them in this.
    c) Since I'm feeling this way ( in sorrow, in pain) anyway,
    I offer it on behalf of others that they may be free of this suffering.
  5. Experiencing the "I am with you" of Jesus.

Last modified: 03 March 2008
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