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Showing posts from May, 2020

A Hot Meal and a Full Fridge

Life magazine photograph of conscientious objectors during starvation experiment. July 30, 1945. Volume 19, Number 5, p. 43. Credit: Wallace Kirkland/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images. Last week, the Brookings Institute released findings from a study estimating that as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, children were experiencing food insecurity in almost one in five households of mothers with children age 12 and under. [1] Today’s headline from the New York Times is about how the emergency child hunger program's slow rollout has left millions of children hungry and waiting. [2] Colleagues have told me of how record numbers of people - lines of a thousand one weekend in New York, seven hundred on another - are now showing up at soup kitchens and food banks.  It is painfully clear that hunger is on the rise.  Over the past few weeks, I have been thinking about this hunger and what it says about who we are as a country at this point in time. I’ve also been thinking about how the Gosp

Ambrose of Milan

“You subject the poor to usury; you know how to oblige them to pay you interest even when they do not have enough to look after their basic needs.”  As I write on this stunningly beautiful day in mid-May 2020, a distressing story is unfolding just outside my apartment in New York and across the United States.  Last week the New York Times reported that unemployment has skyrocketed to 14.7% , the highest rate since the Great Depression [1] . In all likelihood this number underestimates by about 5-6% the actual rate as the official number doesn’t factor in those who cannot file for unemployment. This means, effectively, that fully 20% of the nation is without work with many now multiple weeks into a significant loss of household income. These are incredibly anxious and desperate times for people who were already struggling to make ends meet, and such desperation makes people vulnerable to those who wish to prey on them. One of the long-time practices of preying on the desperation of the

Benedict of Nursia

“Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is received.” Several years ago, while visiting the Met Cloisters , I came across ten decorative corbels from a 12th century Benedictine monastery in France. Corbels are architectural support structures that jut out of walls and aid in holding up whatever is above them. These ten corbels were once set just under the ceiling and roof of the Sauve-Majeure abbey in France. However, it wasn’t their practical function that fascinated me but rather how they’d been sculpted into various creatures, as well as what these motifs said about the Benedictine monks’ perspective on the world. The corbels that once adorned the interior of the monastery had images of biblical figures, angels, and seraphim, whereas those from the exterior of the monastery were of beasts, acrobats, and wrestlers. The contrast between the interior and exterior, the heavenly and the monstrous, spok

Justin Martyr

“Those who have the means help all those who are in want, and we continually meet together.” Justin Martyr’s First Apology, written approximately 155 CE to the Roman emperor Antonius Pius, was composed with the threat of violent persecution flickering in the background. Likely written in response to the burning at the stake of Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, Justin strains to address the main accusations against Christians including atheism, immorality, and disloyalty to the Roman emperor. As part of this argument, Justin included a general outline of how Christians assembled for worship in the second century. Beginning with “Those who have the means help all those who are in want, and we continually meet together,” Justin describes a pattern that feels remarkably familiar. He describes how the Christians assembled on a Sunday, heard a reading from “the writings of the prophets” followed by a discourse from the presider. After a moment of prayer, the service proceeds to a meal of