The Family Foundation School Catholic Community Bulletin
Pauca Verba (a few words)
AN EASTER CONFESSION: PROCRASTINATING?
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This 12 year old girl is Nebeyate Beru. She lives in southern Ethiopia (Africa). Recently she was interviewed by Cross International, an outreach organization that brings food and shelter to the poorest of the poor.
Nebeyate is described as a thoughtful child with gentle eyes. She lives with her mother and her younger brother and sister. During the rainy season, the family manages to get by. They’re able to keep their animals alive – a few goats, selling the little milk they produce to buy some basic grains and vegetables.
But in the dry times – about seven to eight months of the year – the situation becomes frightening and life becomes a daily struggle for survival.
On many days the family must share a handful or two of rice. Nebeyate explains. Sometimes there’s even less. She says, “Sometimes, during the dry season, the goats die and we don’t have anything to eat. My mother makes us tea with sugar to help us, but we’re still hungry. My stomach hurts, but I try not to cry. It’s hard not to, but I don’t want to upset my little sister and brother. I know they’re hungry too.”
During Lent, we might consider what it means to be a follower of Christ. We might consider the Sugar Fast which some are struggling to keep and which others gave up on days ago – perhaps almost immediately. Strange isn’t it? This girl and her family sometimes live on a tea and a little sugar (if they’re lucky) while sugar is seemingly everywhere in our country. The Sugar Fast: a bit of discipline and self-forgetting – and to help repair a little child’s cleft-palette in Asia
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PRAYER FOR THE SECOND WEEK OF LENT
Let us fast, O faithful, from corrupting snares, from harmful passions, so that we may receive a new life from the Cross of Christ and return with the good thief to our initial home. While fasting physically, brothers and sisters, let us remember also to fast spiritually: Let us lose every knot of iniquity, and let us tear up all bondage from evil. Let us distribute bread to the hungry, and welcome into our homes those who have no roof over their heads, so that upon completing the Lenten Fast we may receive great mercy from Christ, our God.
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