You can continue to support these efforts year-round by joining Catholics Confront Global Poverty, an initiative sponsored by Catholic Relief Services and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  Pray, learn, act and give to heed Jesus’ call to love our neighbors as we do ourselves.

Remember to turn in your contributions to your parish or faith community. If your faith community does not participate in CRS’ Operation Rice Bowl, you may submit your gift online or mail it to the address below.

Catholic Relief Services
Operation Rice Bowl
PO Box 17090
Baltimore MD 21203-7090

Your gifts help make Catholic Relief Services’ lifesaving work in nearly 100 countries possible, including the projects you have learned about through CRS’ Operation Rice Bowl this Lent.  Thank you for your support!

We worship a suffering Christ who walks in solidarity with our suffering, and we are called to remember the suffering that people still undergo. This week’s reflection takes us back home, across deserts and oceans to our own country and the hungry at our own doors. We will see how an emergency food assistance program in Virginia provides Easter hope to a woman who has hit hard times, and we will recall the Church’s call to participate in the development of healthy and just communities.

Pray

Our Lenten journey is filled with apparent contradictions. On Ash Wednesday, we proclaimed a Gospel that cautioned against religious practices that all could see.  On Palm Sunday we begin our liturgy by proclaiming the triumphal entry of the King of Glory with processions and palm branches, only to recall in the Gospel how he was arrested, rejected and crucified. We are an Easter people because we balance these seeming contradictions as we embrace the eternal life that came – not despite Jesus’ suffering and sacrifice – but because of it. And we are called to make choices that reflect our own circumstances and acts of solidarity.

Holy Week is a prayer. Clear your calendar as best you can and enter into the rhythm of its liturgies. And bring the poor with you – especially those you have met through your Lenten walk with CRS’ Operation Rice Bowl in the past several weeks. Hold them in prayer as they seek to continue to forge hopeful lives. Offer yourself in prayer as one who seeks to build the Kingdom of God with the hope-filled zeal of our Easter faith.

Fast

If Holy Week is a prayer it also is a fast – a fast from our usual routines and from the kinds of stories that pacify and distract us. The Lenten fast is officially over, but it is replaced by a deeper, more demanding practice.  The ancient practice of fasting has been described as an act of giving up behaviors that were killing the soul. Reflect this week on the attitudes and behaviors you will leave behind in the dust of Lent, and what will replace them in the new life of Easter.

Learn

One of the keys to understanding how we are to live as the Body of Christ in the world is recognizing that our prosperity as people is both developed and realized in relationship with others. This is at the root of the Church’s teaching on community and our call to participate in relationships that build a mutual prosperity and foster social structures that protect and uphold it.

A good example of an effort to foster prosperity is Feed My Sheep, a community outreach program supported by the Diocese of Arlington, VA. Volunteers from several area churches form relationships with people living in poverty, offering support and resources that help them to shape more positive futures. Patricia fell on hard times after moving to Virginia to be with family, and she struggled to put food on the table. Feed My Sheep has helped Patricia to support her family, write a résumé, apply for jobs and find reliable transportation to get to work.  Now she is in a loving community that will help her achieve her goals.

While 75 percent of CRS’ Operation Rice Bowl contributions support Catholic Relief Services’ programs around the world, 25 percent remains in the United States to fund local diocesan hunger and poverty alleviation efforts, such as Feed My Sheep.

Give

By now your Rice Bowl should be quite heavy with the sacrificial contributions you have collected over the last six weeks.  Now is the time for one last push. Place an offering in your Rice Bowl in honor of food banks and outreach programs in your community, knowing that 25 percent of the funds raised through CRS’ Operation Rice Bowl will remain in your local diocese to help support such efforts.

India has seen substantial economic growth over the years, but millions of its people continue to suffer from extreme poverty and malnutrition. Ethnic and religious clashes, seasonal floods, drought, cyclones and violent storms have prevented the poorest of the poor from achieving economic growth and sustainability.  CRS’ health programs in India focus broadly on pre-natal and newborn nutrition, routine immunizations and polio eradication. Providing people with the skills and the resources they need to protect and nurture the children in their care is one way the Church lives out its social teaching to make a preferential option for the poor and to empower the most vulnerable.

Pray

This week spend a little time revisiting the first reading from Sunday’s scriptures. It provides a stunning image of the transforming love of God, a promise that travels with the Jewish people throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and finds a lasting home in Jesus and the Church.

“But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days—oracle of the LORD. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people. They will no longer teach their friends and relatives, ‘Know the LORD!’ Everyone, from least to greatest, shall know me – oracle of the LORD – for I will forgive their iniquity and no longer remember their sin.” (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

This is a God who, despite our sinfulness, our frailty and our doubt, always opts for us. And this same God longs for us to opt for one another – especially for the most vulnerable in our society. What does a law that is written upon the heart look like? It takes the form of action rather than words; it does rather than says. Why?  Because a heart with this kind of law written upon it does not need to be taught what love is; it simply loves, and that gets the job done.

In your prayer this week, reflect on what God has written on your heart, and examine where love is calling you to respond. Who beckons you from beyond your comfort zone?  Who is calling you to love like you have never loved before?

Fast

We are in the final days of Lent, less than a week away from Palm Sunday and Holy Week. It’s time to fast in earnest. Fasting is a practice that often accompanies deep prayer and profound intercession.  This week set aside one day to cut out at least one meal. Or consider a three meal fast, if you are able. To keep a balance of food each day, consider giving up dinner one evening, followed by breakfast and lunch the next. This is a fast you will feel.  Allow the hunger pains to remind you of the pain of poverty; the pain of parents who know their children go to bed hungry; the pain of workers who cannot support their families despite constant labor; the pain of refugees who flee war or who are crushed beneath it. Spend the time you would normally be eating in prayer, for a future that reflects Jeremiah’s vision.

Learn

Malnutrition can begin in the womb. Through CRS’ mother and child health programs, local health workers are trained to teach expectant mothers that eating extra food and taking vitamin supplements can strengthen their unborn children. And they work with families of young children who are not thriving to understand how proper nutrition can give them a more solid future.

Thirteen-year-old Gulsana – who lives in the village of Bahadurnagar, India – understand how a CRS nutritional program could save her baby sister’s life.  Gulsana’s family knew that two-year-old Shabnam had always been small for her age. But when a CRS health worker visited the village and weighed the little girl, the family learned that the child wasn’t taking in enough food. The health worker’s information about proper nutrition and healthy growth for babies, as well as a supply of food supplements, was the key. But the child’s parents didn’t trust the strange food. That’s when Shabnam’s older sister, Gulsana, intervened. After explaining the family’s doubts to the health worker, Gulsana learned a way of preparing the food that would make it acceptable to her skeptical parents and to her little sister. Now Shabnam is healthier and has more energy to move and play.

Give

By their nature children must depend on the adults around them for their basic needs. As a result, children in poverty suffer most from the lack of food, clean water, sanitation, health care and stable homes, and they have the least ability to change their situations. How many children move through your life each day – in your immediate or extended family, in your neighborhood, and in your workplace?  Count these children and drop an offering in your Rice Bowl for each child in your circle of care.

In this African country, nearly 68 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day, and in Mongu, farmers find that their small farms can barely support their families. A lack of capital had kept workers from starting businesses that might be more profitable than subsistence farming. By creating the infrastructure for small community-run banks, Catholic Relief Services and its local partners have employed the church’s teaching to respect the dignity of workers and their labor.

Pray

Sunday’s Gospel recounts Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. Why does Nicodemus come to see Jesus under the cover of darkness? Because he has everything to lose: his status in society, his place in the Sanhedrin, and his very reputation are at stake. While Jesus is deeply loved by the poor, the powerful members of society see him as a real threat.

Yet Nicodemus knows his Scriptures; he is a shrewd and discerning judge of his time, and he cannot deny the signs of this holy man. In a very real sense, despite the late hour of his visit, he has been driven out of darkness and into light. Jesus waits with the gift of life that comes from an abiding faith in a God of love, Who will stop at nothing to save a sinful world.  This is the blessed assurance that Nicodemus craves.  The story is an invitation for us to come in from the dark as well. In your prayer this week, reflect on the ways that the love of Christ challenges the values held up by our society, and the patterns we follow in our daily lives.  What do you risk in following Jesus? How will you bring your discipleship more fully into the light of day?

Fast

How do you spend your hours after dinner?  Do you make time for an evening snack? Watch television? Go back to work?  Like Nicodemus, consider visiting Jesus during the later hours this week.  Fast from the evening routine and create a space to spend in prayer or just in the presence of Christ. Pray a rosary. Meditate. Read the scriptures of the day, or even pray Vespers, the church’s evening prayer.

Learn

What happens when the root causes of poverty are brought into the light, where they cannot be ignored, but must be named and addressed? Change begins to happen.

In’utu Kokola and her husband were simply not able to get by on the earnings from their small farm in Mongu, Zambia. They needed another source of income, but couldn’t get started without a loan. Large banks rarely open loan offices in such remote places or grant loans to families with little credit. CRS helped their community form its own small bank, where community members pooled their resources and were able to grant loans to support small businesses and members’ medical care or education.

Such banks are an act of faith – faith that communities can govern the distribution of their own resources; faith that the vote of group members is fair and that loan recipients will repay the loans; faith that a small investment from CRS can grow into self-sustaining businesses and foster community health. In the light of such faith, workers blossom and their labor pays off. With her small loan, In’utu Kokola has opened a shop in the market where she sells vegetables and corn meal. She now has money to feed her family, buy medicine, and pay school fees for her grandchildren.

Give

This week consider placing the equivalent of a micro-loan in your Rice Bowl.  These small loans can range from $5 to $50 but they can mean the difference between dire poverty and a future for the poorest of the poor, who invest the capital in small businesses that pay for education, health care and food.

With 7 million people living within its borders, El Salvador is the most densely-populated country in Central America.  The income inequality between rural and urban areas is severe, and competition for natural resources is intense.  Access to clean water can be a significant factor in fighting poverty. Reflecting on the Church’s teaching on rights and responsibilities, how do we in the United States share responsibility for this right to clean water and sanitation throughout the world?

Pray

Sunday’s Gospel is disturbing, especially if your church gathering space often houses bake sales, church bazaars and fundraisers.  Does the cleansing of the temple mean Jesus would run the fundraising committee out the front door?

In this week’s Gospel, Jesus is really driving away those activities that lead people away from the worship of God and the loving relationships that flow from it.  Instead, he invites believers to encounter God in a new temple – Himself.

If we are to understand Jesus as the source of oneness with God, then the worshipping community – the Body of Christ – should see itself as a temple where God can be found as well. As a member, you are also a place of covenant, and worship, and communion, which means that the temple is much more portable than any building of brick and mortar. By becoming human through the Incarnation of Christ, God has returned to the traveling ways of the ancient desert days. And we, as the body of Christ, are the caravan.

So some key Lenten questions for us in this Scripture passage are as follows: What have we allowed to take up residence in this house of God that does not belong there? What in our lives has edged into our worship space and has tried to take priority over God’s presence there? In your prayer this week, take inventory of yourself as a house where God resides. Ask God to show you the doubts and fears, the prejudice and blindness, the greed and pride that bar others from access to Christ who is dwelling in you.  Once all of that furniture is removed, there will be so much more room for the visitors God sends your way.

And you can rest assured that the bake sales and bazaars, including CRS’ Work of Human Hands sales, at your church will be safe.

Fast

Take a look down the beverage aisle at your local grocery story, and you’ll find a dazzling array of ways to quench your thirst.   The colors! The flavors! The bottle designs! And that’’s just the shelves of water.  Meanwhile, throughout the world more than 800 million people do not have access to clean water.  Community members, usually women and girls, travel miles by foot to haul gallons of water back to family members.

For your fast this week consider drinking only water, and give up other beverages. The daily drinking water requirement is two to four liters per person. As a way of reflecting on the burden that securing and hauling water can be for so many in the world, try drinking only what you bring with you. Carry a liter bottle of water with you throughout the week (it will weigh a little over two pounds).  Fill it from local taps.

Learn

Among those with new access to clean water is María Idalia Serrano and her family in El Pedregal, El Salvador. For most of her life, her days revolved around collecting water for the drinking and cleaning needs of her family.  She made five trips a day to the nearest river.  But all that changed a few years ago when CRS helped build a well in her village and provided a means to purify the water.  Now 130 families have faucets that bring clean water right into their homes. María can spend more time with her children.  She and her husband also volunteer with CRS in their community to teach their neighbors about how to protect this precious resource of clean water and to take responsibility for its maintenance and the health of community residents. They are living examples of the Catholic social teaching on rights and responsibilities.

Give

If you drink only tap water this week as part of your fast, calculate how much you save by not purchasing bottled water and other beverages.  Place the equivalent in your Rice Bowl as an investment in the human right to clean water and our global responsibility to ensure systems for sanitation and purification for all people.

Despite rapid economic growth in the past few decades, Vietnam has seen a widening gap between the rich and the poor.  People with disabilities are among those who are often neglected in poor communities, where they have limited access to education and opportunities to overcome physical challenges. Reflecting the Catholic social teaching principle on the dignity of the human person, Catholic Relief Services offers training and support that allows people with disabilities to experience new life.

Pray

After making the steep climb up the mountain, seeing the dazzling image of Jesus flanked by Elijah and Moses, and hearing the terrifying voice of God, Peter, James and John took a long walk home. They were musing about this question:  what does it mean to rise from the dead? To this day, we puzzle over it still. What does it mean to rise from the dead? What does it mean to have eternal life? What will become of our loved ones, our memories, and our bodies at our death? Can we bear to be that close to the almighty God?

Perhaps we can learn from the small deaths and resurrections that mark our Lenten lives. In your prayer this week, recall the times when you have left behind sinful behaviors, unhealthy habits, and deadening ways of living. Did this process happen suddenly or slowly? Were you lonely or supported in your endeavor? Where was God in these deaths? How did you encounter God in the new life that followed? Prayerfully imagine what it would be like for those now suffering from injustice, violence, famine or disease to experience new lives of hope and stability. It is an image that resounds throughout Scripture. Ask God how you can be part of this work toward resurrection.

Fast

In a culture that prizes fitness, self-sufficiency and independence, the prospect of becoming needy or dependent can be truly terrifying.  In His public ministry, however, Jesus embodied both the ability to give and to receive. While he healed the sick, he also relied on others for his food and shelter.  He graciously received anointing and assistance from others when he had fallen.  This week, fast from your independence and self-sufficiency.  Graciously receive help when it is offered to you. In a note, e-mail or personal word, thank the people who have supported you, comforted you, carried you and helped to make the life you have possible.

Learn

CRS’ Inclusion of Vietnamese with Disabilities (IVWD) program in Vietnam helps people with physical disabilities achieve higher education and find good jobs.  Giap, has used a wheelchair since an illness debilitated his muscles when he was 17. After he graduated from high school, he began attending a CRS-supported college for people with disabilities.  While studying at this school, Giap has learned computer skills and alsogained experience working in an office setting, and he has started a group that designs websites for businesses.

Through the IVWD program, Catholic Relief Services provides children who have disabilities with the resources they need to to reach their full potential. These resources include physical therapy, wheelchairs, hearing aids and teachers who are trained and equipped to work with students with disabilities. In Hanoi, the college that Giap attends helps students recognize and capitalize on their special talents, and links them to real job opportunities after graduation.

Give

Those of us who are able-bodied, who do not rely on wheelchairs or special technologies to help us get around or complete basic functions, often forget that our bodies can take us where we need to go.  Instead, we rely on cars, elevators and escalators to move us around. Count up the times you use technology to help you get from one place to another this week, and put an offering in your Rice Bowl for each instance.

Our first stop along this journey is the farmlands of rural Madagascar, an island nation off the southern coast of East Africa.  This tiny country of 17 million people is one of the poorest in the world – Madagascar ranks 151st out of 187 countries in the 2011 Human Development Report (United Nations Development Programme). Madagascar’s economic growth is hampered by the country’s limited infrastructure, mountainous topography, and severe weather conditions that lead to frequent cyclones and flooding. Although 80 percent of the Malagasy population relies on farming as their primary or secondary source of income, Madagascar’s annual food production does not meet its domestic needs.

Catholic Relief Services’ programming in Madagascar aims to increase the ability of the poorest communities to access food. CRS trains farmers to use environmentally-sensitive techniques that increase their food production while preserving the land for future generations. These programs reflect the Catholic social teaching principle, Care for God’s Creation.

Pray

The first reading from Sunday’s liturgy (Gen 9:8-15) gives us a good insight into the kind of promises God makes with His people.  When the waters of the great flood receded, God made a covenant that extends not only to Noah and his descendents, but to all of creation: God will preserve and protect creation and never destroy it. Each rainbow is a reminder to us, a divine sign embedded in the natural world.  In turn, part of our covenantal relationship with God is to live in loving relationship with God’s creation, to care for it and nurture it.

In your prayer this week, ask God to help you to be particularly aware of your relationship with the natural world. Consider from where your water comes and whether your use of water protects or wastes it.  Reflect on where your food originates and whether the systems that produce it are responsible to workers, animals, consumers and the environment. Spend time outside, walking to work or school or around your neighborhood. What is the quality of the air, the green spaces and the walkways? Examine your participation in this interconnected system, and ask God to show you how to uphold our covenant to nurture the earth.

Fast

Small-scale farmers make up more than half of the world’s rural poor, while producing about four-fifths of food supplies in developing countries, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In solidarity with small farmers around the world and in the United States, make a commitment to fast from food this week that travels great distances to get to you. Fill the week’s diet with seasonal foods grown and raised on small, local farms. Are these easy to obtain? Does they cost more?

Learn

For Mr. Robin, a farmer in Madagascar, the difference between subsistence farming and agricultural prosperity for his community came in the forms of a water pump, drought-resistant seeds and new planting techniques.  Before, members of Mr. Robin’s community spent much of their time hauling water, which meant they grew fewer crops on smaller plots of land.  Now, with the help of CRS’ agricultural assistance and expertise, Mr. Robin grows corn, lettuce, sorghum, cucumbers, pumpkins and orange trees on his farm.  He has hired two people to help him tend to his expanded fields, and sells his vegetables in the village for half the price charged at the market.  As the president of the local farmers’ association, he lets other farmers use part of his land to test new crops and farming methods.

The environmentally-sensitive techniques that CRS shares with small-scale farmers around the world reflect the Church’s teaching to care for all of God’s creation – including both the land and the people who work on it – thereby fostering communities that are healthy and sustainable.

Give

It doesn’t cost much to take the whole family out to a fast food restaurant, but this week, make a point to eat at home, and put the equivalent cost of a family’s fast food meal in the Rice Bowl as an investment in sustainable, small-scale farming that improves the health of entire communities.

Today’s Gospel reading from the sixth chapter of Matthew (Mt 6:1-6, 16-18) suggests that, when it comes to the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, we have to get our priorities in order. It is not enough simply to do these actions. The Ash Wednesday readings challenge us to look beyond the mere practices and towards the greater task of living out our faith and drawing closer to God through these practices. The goal is not a new one, but is repeated over and over throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, including in today’s reading from Joel. We are called to return to God. And if we have strayed far from the Reign of God, it is our return to Him that merits the ashes of mourning and repentance that we receive today.

Lent gives us six weeks to enter deeply into the work of returning and rebuilding a loving relationship with God and with other people; however, the season can still get away from us.  We have a few days between Ash Wednesday and the First Sunday of Lent to prepare ourselves to enter into this holy season. And that’s good, because we have a little groundwork to do before we can begin our Lenten practices in earnest.

First we need to make some time.

In the remaining days before the first Sunday of Lent, take out your calendar and carve out the time you will set aside to be truly present for your prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Commit to a regular time of reflection each day. Set aside a journal for writing your prayers and insights. Find a prominent place for your Rice Bowl to remind you of the pressing global needs that call for your generosity. Read through CRS’ Operation Rice Bowl Lenten Calendar so you can anticipate ways that you and your household can observe Lent together. And finally, be aware of the stories of Easter hope that lie among the Lenten ashes.