From: gjm11@cus.cam.ac.uk (G.J. McCaughan)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Subject: a prayer
Date: 27 Sep 92 15:44:27 GMT
Organization: U of Cambridge, England

I have eaten,
I have eaten too much,
I have eaten only because others have done so,
Because I was invited,
Because I was in the world and the world would not have understood;
And each dish
And each mouthful
And each morsel was hard to get down.
I have eaten too much, Lord,
While at that moment, in my town, more than 1500 persons queued up at the 
   bread line,
While in her attic a woman ate what she had salvaged that morning from the
   garbage bins,
While urchins in their orphanage divided some scraps from the old folks' home,
While ten, a hundred, a thousand unfortunates throughout the world, at that
   very moment twisted in pain and died of hunger before their despairing
   families.

Lord, it's terrible, for I know,
Men know, now.

They know that not only a few destitute are hungry, but hundreds at their
   own doors.
They know that not only several hundreds but thousands are hungry on the
   borders of their country,
They know that not only thousands, but millions, are hungry throughout the 
   world.

Men have made a map of the prevalence of hunger,
Areas of starvation and death, appalling.
The figures stand out in stark and implacable truth.
The minimum wage for a month here is, for millions and millions of human beings,
   their maximum wage for a year.
One third of humanity is underfed.
Several million die of hunge in India in the course of one famine alone.
On an average, the Indians live for barely 26 years.

Lord, you see this map, you read these figures,
Not like a calm statistician in his office,
But like the father of a large family bending over the head of each of his sons.
Lord, you have seen this map, you have read these figures since the beginning
   of time,
And you told the story, for me, of the rich man at table and the poor starved
   Lazarus;
And you spoke, for me, of the Last Judgement.
" ... I was hungry ... "

It's you who queue up at the bread line,
It's you who eat the scraps of garbage,
It's you who are tortured by hunger and starve to death,
It's you who die alone in a corner at 26,
While in another corner of the great hall of the world -- with some members
   of our family --- I eat without being hungry, what is needed to save you.

" ... I was hungry ... "

Remind me of that, Lord, if I cease for a moment to give myself.
I'll never be through giving bread to my brothers, for there are too many of
   them.
There'll always be some who won't have had their share.
I'll never be through fighting to get bread for all my brothers.

Lord, it isn't easy to feed the world.
I would rather say my prayers regularly, properly;
I would rather fast on Fridays,
I would rather visit my poor man,
I would rather give to fetes and orphanages;
But apparently that isn't enough.
It's nothing, if one day you can say to me: "I was hungry!"

Lord, I'm no longer hungry,
Lord, I don't want to be hungry again.
Lord, I want to eat only what I need to live, to serve you and to fight for my
   brothers.
For you are hungry, Lord,
You die of hunger, while I am surfeited.

                     -- Michel Quoist, from "Prayers of Life".

-- 
Gareth McCaughan     Dept. of Pure Mathematics & Mathematical Statistics,
gjm11@cus.cam.ac.uk  Cambridge University, England.    [Research student]
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU