Italy
The column “Testimoni di misericordia” with Nino Savarino’s (e-book) book. This Monday, the verb “to hoe” and the Work “to feed the hungry”.
One chapter at a time from the book by Nino Savarino, Governor of the Misericordia di Rosolini, friend of spazio + spadoni and collaborator in several projects and the blog.
From Psalm 145 (144)
The eyes of all look to you in hope, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.
Hoeing the earth. Working and loving Creation
Pope Francis said: “It is good to think that Jesus himself worked and that he learned this trade from Saint Joseph”.
“Men and women are nourished by work: by work they are anointed with dignity. For this reason, the entire social pact is built around work. This is the crux of the matter. Because when people do not work, or work badly, work too little or work too much, it is democracy that enters into crisis, it is the entire social pact”.
Hoeing is the hardest work, the one that makes you sweat and tires you out. But it is the work that prepares for sowing and harvesting: work makes you an active member of society and makes you its protagonist.
Work is the dignity of the children of God. Yet, work is often lacking and sometimes kills you: through negligence, indifference, lack of mutual solidarity. Safety at work makes work dignified. Let us return to hoeing in the vineyard of the Lord. And let us make our work, our hoeing, an opportunity to help others work, to live with dignity. Ours will be a creative and beautiful journey if we share work and offer the fruit of our hoeing to brothers and sisters in need.
What can we do in practice?
FEEDING THE HUNGRY
And so, what could “feeding the hungry” mean today, in our contradictory present? The first meaning could certainly be found in the “practical” act of helping someone in need. Nothing could be truer or more just. But should we stop at that? Sharing cannot be relegated solely to the act itself of providing food and water to someone. It is not an anthropological work, it is not an act of social justice that is an end in itself. And it is in this case that a keyword comes into play that could give us a much broader explanation: that word is fraternity.
Feeding the hungry could thus become a way of offering everyone words of hope and love, in addition to material goods. And, in doing so, deep down, we too could be satisfied, since we are all in need, we are all in the same boat of the world.
Antonio Tarallo, Dare da mangiare agli affamati, March 15, 2023
POINTS FOR REFLECTION
Now, while they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to the disciples, saying: «Take and eat; this is my body» (Matthew 26:26)
Source and image: N. Savarino, “Witnesses of Mercy”
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