By Kimberley Heatherington
(OSV News) – “It is a scandal,” Pope Francis said in his 2013 message for World Food Day, “that there is still hunger and malnutrition in the world!”

The pontiff further warned against acceptance of that lethal truth, cautioning that “hunger and malnutrition can never be considered a normal occurrence to which one must become accustomed, as if it were part of the system. Something has to change in ourselves, in our mentality, in our societies.”

Listeners may readily nod in agreement – while all too easily imagining that Pope Francis was speaking of some distant, developing nation.

But the truth is, even in the United States – the richest country in the world, if ranked by its $26.95 trillion gross domestic product, or GDP – 49 million Americans, one in every six, relied on food assistance from charities in 2022.

During Poverty Awareness Month, OSV News talked with Catholic Charities offices across the country – in Virginia, Mississippi and Nevada – to learn how they help feed a hungry nation.

The Diocese of Arlington, Virginia – just outside the nation’s capital – is home to four of America’s richest locales, in terms of median income: Loudoun, Fairfax and Arlington counties, and the city of Falls Church. It’s a landscape distinguished by large homes, elevated rents and a highly educated workforce.

“But the reality is that – even in this prosperous area of the country, there is significant poverty,” explained Bishop Michael F. Burbidge after he blessed the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Arlington’s new Alexandria regional office Jan. 5. “There are people who are hungry every day, every night – not knowing where their next meal is coming from. And so, it’s our sacred duty to kind of wake people up a little bit, and say, ‘No – if we’re really looking, the need is apparent.'”

The new regional office – which includes an expanded food pantry and emergency financial assistance services – opened at a time when casual observers might expect the economic gaps apparent during COVID to be mended.

They aren’t.

An estimated 200,000-plus people remain food insecure in the Arlington Diocese, which encompasses 21 counties and seven cities. The three Catholic Charities food pantries and warehouse form an integral part of the more than 50 pantries and various distribution sites located throughout the diocese, all coordinating together to serve the hungry.

More than 59,000 food requests were made during the last year, $2.2 million in food was distributed, and Christ House shelter served 17,627 free evening meals.

“When we tell people within the last year there’s been a 40% increase in the number of people served – that’s a significant number,” Bishop Burbidge said. “Sometimes you get the word out by numbers – the pounds of food that have been delivered. So the good news is that there is a more spacious place to serve even more people. But the sad reality is, the need is just as great, too.”

Synodality, Bishop Burbidge shared, is essential in serving the poor.

“Even though we may have good intentions, if it comes from above – ‘We want to do good works, and this is what we’re going to do’ – it may not be the most effective way of serving. So it must begin with that synodality, that listening,” he explained. “What are the needs – the most critical needs – at this point? And when you hear from the people you’re trying to help, then you’re going to be more effective.”

“When people come into this place,” Bishop Burbidge said of the food pantry, “one of the things that respects the dignity of the human person is that they get a cart – and they choose. That helps uplift the dignity of the person.”

Mississippi – according to the Mississippi Food Network – “has the worst hunger problem in America.” The charity reports almost one in six Mississippians – about 480,600 people – don’t have enough to eat, while more than one in five children (18.8%) frequently go to bed hungry.

Those are all-too-familiar statistics to Chamon Williams, community services manager at Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi, which includes 65 of the state’s 82 counties.

“We’re always looking for different solutions or resources to support the community,” Williams said.

One solution to senior hunger in Natchez – a little over 100 miles from Jackson – is a partnership between Catholic Charities and the Basilica of St. Mary. Each month, seniors in need are offered a box that includes such food staples as meat, vegetables, fruit, sugar, flour and more. An average of 40 boxes are distributed monthly.

“Because they are on a fixed income,” Williams explained, “the likelihood of many of these individuals receiving SNAP benefits – or even receiving SNAP benefits that would allow them to buy all of the staples that they need on a monthly basis – may be slim, based on their income.” SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the largest federal food assistance program to people with low incomes.

It’s an awful paradox – numerous of the box recipients are just well enough off, in the government’s assessment, to not receive comprehensive food assistance, but are not well enough off to cover combined costs of rent, medicine and food.

While “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” those who live in (rather than simply visit) Las Vegas, the most populous city in Nevada, struggle with more than just the lure of the Strip and its casinos. More than 274,000 Southern Nevadans – including one in six children – experienced food insecurity in 2023.

Deacon Tom Roberts – president and CEO of Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada – is uniquely qualified to identify with the needs of his community. During a 30-plus-year executive career in the gaming industry, he was ordained a deacon for the then-Diocese of Las Vegas (now an archdiocese). When his predecessor at Catholic Charities – Msgr. Patrick Leary – died unexpectedly, Deacon Roberts was asked to step in.

He’s been there ever since.

“I like to say, ‘Our clients never expected to be here, and neither did I,'” Deacon Roberts shared, noting Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada has dealt with a “dramatic” rise in food insecurity in the last decade.

The numbers Deacon Roberts cites underscore that assertion: almost 2,500 meals on wheels delivered per day to senior citizens, with another 1,000 on a waiting list; 500-600 community meals served daily; and 150 daily visitors to the community food pantry, open five days per week.

“There’s more need than ever,” sighed Deacon Roberts, who – even as CEO – continues to help deliver meals. Sometimes, what he encounters still has the capacity to shock.

“I’d see the dishes that our food comes in on the floor,” Deacon Roberts recalled, “and I’d say, ‘Why is your dish on the ground? Didn’t you like the food?’ And they’d say, ‘No, deacon – we’re sharing our food with our pets.'”
“And so I’d go out in my car and cry,” the deacon reflected, “and then we started to put donated pet food on our delivery run. Hundreds of our seniors now are as excited and grateful for the food that feeds their companion, so they’re not having to share their food with that pet. It’s been a complete eye-opener for me.”

Deacon Roberts adds, “They’re having to make that sad decision of, ‘Can I afford my rent and my medicine, or do I have food?'”

At the free daily community meal, Deacon Roberts said, “so many of these people we’re serving in that dining room every day are homeless – or as they get towards the end of the month, they just run out of money. Families come in – it breaks my heart to see families and little ones come in.”

Other resources also are available at mealtime, with Deacon Roberts’ staff and volunteers on the lookout to “connect the dots for people.”

“Help and hope” is their mission, according to Deacon Roberts – optimism and assistance for all.
“I like to say we don’t check religious ID cards around here,” Deacon Roberts said. “So anybody that needs help and hope can get it.”

(Kimberley Heatherington writes for OSV News from Virginia.)

By D.D. Emmons
(OSV News) – Among the beautiful, meaningful and solemn ceremonies of the Catholic Church is the gathering of the faithful on Ash Wednesday.

This special day begins our Lenten journey. It is the start of 40 days of prayer, penance and almsgiving as we prepare ourselves to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. But why does Lent begin on a Wednesday, and what is the significance of ashes?

Ash Wednesday was added to the liturgical calendar well after the 40-day penitential season of Lent became the norm throughout the Latin Church. Lent, in turn, was universally established only after the early church sorted out the date of Easter. The issue was clarified at the famous Council of Nicaea in 325 where “all the Churches agreed that Easter, the Christian Passover, should be celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon (14 Nisan) after the vernal equinox.” (Catechism, No. 1170) The vernal (spring) equinox generally falls on March 21, thus the date of Easter in the Western Church can occur anytime between March 22 and April 25.

The word “Lent” is from an Old English term meaning “springtime,” and by the second century the term was being used to describe the period of individual fasting, almsgiving and prayer in preparation for Easter. Among the Christians of the first three centuries, only those aspiring for baptism – the catechumens – observed a defined period of preparation, and that time lasted only two or three days.

The idea of Lent being 40 days in length evolved over the next few centuries, and it is difficult to establish the precise time as to when it began. Among the canons issued by the Council of Nicaea, the church leaders, in Canon Five, made reference to Lent: “and let these synods be held, the one before Lent that the pure gift may be offered to God after all bitterness has been put away, and let the second be held about autumn.” The language of this canon seems to validate that Lent, in some fashion, had by the fourth century been established and accepted by the church. While the exact timing and extent of Lent both before and after the Nicaea council is unclear, what is clear from historical documents is that Christians did celebrate a season of Lent to prepare themselves for Resurrection Sunday and used a variety of ways to do so.

That Lent evolved into a period of 40 days in length is not surprising, as there are numerous biblical events that also involved 40 days. Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving instructions from God for that number of days (see Ex 24:18); Noah and his entourage were on the Ark waiting for the rains to end for 40 days and 40 nights (Gn 7:4); and Elijah “walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb.” (1 Kgs 19:8)

Mostly, though, the 40 days of Lent identify with the time our Lord Jesus spent in the desert fasting, praying and being tempted by the devil. (Mt 4:1-11) “By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert.” (Catechism, No. 540)

There is, therefore, evidence that by the end of the fourth century Christians were participating in a 40-day Lent before Easter. The dilemma now became how to count the 40 days. In the Latin Church, six weeks were used to identify the Lenten period, but one doesn’t fast on Sundays, so six Sundays were subtracted and there remained only 36 fasting days. In the early seventh century, St. Pope Gregory I the Great (pope from 590-604) resolved this situation by adding as fast days the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday before the first Sunday of Lent. Thus the Lenten 40-day fast, or the Great Fast as it was known, would begin on a Wednesday.

Initially, people fasted all 40 days of Lent. They ate one meal a day and only an amount of food that would sustain survival. But the church taught, and people believed (then as now), that fasting is not about what we eat, it is about changing hearts, interior conversion, reconciliation with God and others. It’s about living in an austere way, giving from our abundance to the poor. St. John Chrysostom (347-407) explained it this way: “Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works! … If you see a poor man, take pity on him! If you see an enemy, be reconciled to him! If you see a friend gaining honour, envy him not! If you see a handsome woman, pass her by!” (Homily on the Statutes, III.11)

The church has long used ashes as an outward sign of grief, a mark of humility, mourning, penance and morality. The Old Testament is filled with stories describing the use of ashes in such a manner. In the Book of Job, Job repented before God: “Therefore, I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes.” (42:6) Daniel “turned to the Lord God, to seek help, in prayer and petition, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.” (Dn 9:3) Jonah preached conversion and repentance to the people of Nineveh: “When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes.” (Jonah 3:6) And the Maccabees army prepared for battle: “That day they fasted and wore sackcloth; they sprinkled ashes on their heads and tore their garments.” (1 Mc 3:47)

Ashes were imposed on the early catechumens when they began their preparation time for baptism. Confessed sinners of that era were also marked with ashes as part of the public penitential process. Other baptized Christians began asking to receive ashes in a manner similar to catechumens and penitents. Christian men had ashes sprinkled on their heads while ashes were used to trace the cross on the forehead of women. Thus the use of ashes as the sign of penance, in readiness for Easter, was becoming a churchwide practice.

During the papacy of St. Gregory the Great, the practice was further expanded and is mentioned in the sixth-century Gregorian Sacramentary. Around the year 1000, Abbot Aelfric of the monastery of Eynsham, England, wrote: “We read in the books both in the Old Law and in the new that men who repented of their sins bestowed on themselves with ashes and clothed their bodies with sackcloth. Now let us do this little at the beginning of our Lent, that we strew ashes upon our heads, to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten feast.” This same rite of distributing ashes on the Wednesday that begins Lent was recommended for universal use by Pope Urban II at the Synod of Benevento in 1091.

So when we go to that early Mass on Ash Wednesday morning and receive the blessed ashes on our forehead, we are repeating a somber, pious act that Catholics have been undergoing for over 1,500 years. As “The Liturgical Year, Septuagesima,” by the Benedictine Abbot Gueranger, written in the middle decades of the 1800s, puts it: “We are entering, today, upon a long campaign of the warfare spoke of by the apostles: forty days of battle, forty days of penance. We shall not turn cowards, if our souls can but be impressed with the conviction that the battle and the penance must be gone through. Let us listen to the eloquence of the solemn rite which opens our Lent. Let us go whither our mother leads us, that is, to the scene of the fall.”

Like all those before us, we unhesitatingly embrace this invitation to sanctity, this time to turn away from sin. We are part of that great cloud of witnesses who through all the ages have donned the ashes, publicly acknowledging that we are Christians, Christians who have sinned and seek to repent. We acknowledge that “we are dust and to dust we shall return.”

(D.D. Emmons writes from Pennsylvania.)

By Sandy Cunningham
SAINT BENEDICT, La. – A group of seminarians from St. Joseph Seminary College won the 22nd annual Father Pat O’Malley Invitational basketball tournament in Mundelein, Illinois, this past weekend. It is the second straight year the team has won the tournament, which brings seminarians from around the country together to compete on the hardwood.

St. Joseph Seminary swept through pool play with wins over Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary (Athenaeum) from Cincinnati, 61-38, host Mundelein Seminary, 49-39 in overtime, and St. John Vianney Theological Seminary of Denver, 54-49. The Ravens defeated Mundelein in the semifinals, 35-30, to advance to Sunday’s championship game, where they beat Conception College Seminary of Conception, Missouri, 75-62.

Team members are Ethan Green, Thomas Benson, Michael Bradford, Tim Talbott and Joey Piccini, Archdiocese of Mobile; Grayson Foley and Francisco Maldonado, Diocese of Jackson; Evan Lang and Jacob Zimmerer, Diocese of Fort Worth; Emmanuel Legarreta, Diocese of El Paso; and Carter Domingue and Logan Simon, Diocese of Lafayette. Zach Jolly (Saint Joseph Abbey) assisted the team, coached by Brian Cochran. Father Maurice Moon served as team chaplain.

Domingue, who scored 32 points in the championship game, was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player.

(Sandy Cunnuingham is the communications and marketing manager for St. Joseph Seminary College in St. Benedict, Louisiana.)