Hunger for bread, hunger for God

Since February 24, with the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the Arsenal of Peace has suddenly been filled with people of the most diverse ages, social class, origins. Thousands of people came with a shopping bag or a car, a truck full of food, personal hygiene products, medical supplies ... to be delivered to the Ukrainian people. Hundreds and hundreds then stopped to help with sorting, crowding the tables, filling the boxes, preparing the containers to be shipped ... A wave of flood that has been repeated every day for more than a month and that has allowed us to send 1,000 tons of aid. Not to mention the thousands of people who are contributing with cash donations, transport, boxes.

Since then we have lived immersed in this river of humanity with an insistent question in our hearts and minds: but how is it possible that this is happening, without having sought it, without having organized ourselves, without knowing practically any of these people and without having looked for them? How is it possible? In this month I have not had the strength to go beyond this insistent question and look for answers, but I have kept an image that does not leave me and is the emotion of the people who enter the courtyard and see what is happening cry, thank, smile, he stops, and asks to go back to join the stream of people who are there to help, like someone who has found something good and doesn't want to lose it. There is truly something good in all this that we all need, something good not only for those who receive but also for those who give and feel the good grow within them. In the midst of the pain for the war that is advancing, for the destruction of a nation, for the flight of millions of women and children, the disabled, the elderly ... there is this sign of shared life that gives hope, there is this great good that balances the great evil of war. And we can only say with amazement: "We see this event which the Lord has made known to us" (Lk 2:15).

I remembered that at the beginning of the pandemic, Ernesto had told us that when everything was over we would hold the 7th Meeting of the Youth for Peace: Hunger for bread, hunger for God. We wondered when and how it would have been. I can't help but think that we are living it now, not a one-day appointment but of a long time, where the generations of fathers and sons really met. An appointment to give food to the unspeakably hungry Ukrainian people, but also to respond to the hunger for meaning of the people who are witnessing in disbelief and helplessness a much closer catastrophe than many others that have been consumed over time. It was not foreseen, we were not prepared, but it is the work of God who walked in front of us all, awakening in many the need for good, the need for a gift that is imprinted in every human creature.

Is it hungry for God? Where there is hunger for meaning, hunger for goodness, hunger for beauty, hunger for truth, hunger for love ... there is hunger for God. When you have felt at least once surrounded by a disproportionate good, which humanly you do not explain but that makes you feel good, even if you have moved away from it, you will always have nostalgia for it and one moment or another of your life, in ways that you do not know, perhaps looking for the meaning of a meaningless war, you will come back to your steps and you will recognize the Bread that truly feeds you. You will find yourself reliving the experience of the two disciples who walked from Jerusalem to Emmaus, after the death of Jesus. They recognized him risen and alive when he broke bread for them at table with them. The words of their astonishment are also ours: “Didn't our hearts burn within us as he conversed with us along the way, when he explained the Scriptures to us? Truly the Lord is risen! " (from Lk 24,13ff).


Rosanna Tabasso
NP April 2022