Invite Jesus to your Prayer Walk

Meet Priyanka, 12 years old, with her mother, Megha. They live in East India where poverty is pervasive and food security is vital for life. Like thousands of other youths her age and younger, Priyanka is able to eat well because CRS accompanies her parents as they learn new practices for growing and harvesting their food. Priyanka and her community can help us recognize Jesus in the hungry. They are our brothers and sisters who strive to live life fully, as you do.

More than 40 million children suffer from severe malnutrition each year. Vulnerable communities like Priyanka’s worldwide are experiencing increasing hunger due to the frequent flooding that disrupts daily living and ruins the harvest, leaving people little to no means of feeding their families.

Valeriano, 85 years old, is enjoying a glass of fresh, clean water. He lives in a small town on the Nicaraguan coastline where the only accessible water was salty. That is, until a CRS program brought in equipment needed to provide clean water. Valeriano shares, “Before I used to get sick from my stomach more often. I think it was because of the water.” All around the world, people know, “Water is life.”

Water is indeed a precious resource of the earth, providing life for all of God’s creation. But with the rising ocean temperatures, scarcity of clean water threatens all of us. Climate change is producing more persistent droughts and increased flooding worldwide. The devasting consequences are felt most by impoverished communities like Valeriano’s who suffer homelessness, hunger, and danger of illness and death without clean, safe water.

Friar Sebastian, originally from Poland, lived in Ukraine for 18 years before the current invasion. Supported by CRS funds, he operates a mobile soup kitchen. All are welcomed with open arms, a listening ear, and a chance to pray in community with others. The war has changed Friar Sebastian's work; now, his ministry also includes phone calls, talking and praying with refugees forced out of their homes by the invasion.

Today, there are over a million people on the move who have been forced out of their home due to war, hunger, and climate change effects. War degrades not only humans, but also the land that is left barren and unable to produce food or serve as a natural buffer to protect the people from the effects of climate change. As Friar Sebastian knows, a welcome that also includes practical help matters!

Mfutu has a way to help others have the clothes they need, as she supports herself and her family. Thanks to equipment and training provided by CRS, she now is a professional seamstress. She says, “First of all, I serve my local community as my first clients. But also, people from all over our city come to have their clothes sewn at my place.” In the clothes Mfutu sews, the designs and colors enhance the wearers’ sense of dignity and their cultural pride.

Refugees and migrants most often must flee with little more than the clothes they are wearing and the few belongings they can carry in their arms. They are exposed, not only physically but their self-identity and sense of belonging to a place and community is stripped away. They are among the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters whose human dignity must be restored and safeguarded.

Like mothers everywhere, Tadi is full of joy that her baby is healthy! In Guinea, for generations, malaria has been a leading cause of permanent illness and death. But thanks to CRS’ malaria prevention programs, that will not be true for Tadi and her daughter, Koria. The white “drape” is an insecticide-treated mosquito net that will keep them healthy. Pregnant women and children under five are the first to receive them.

Mosquito netting like Tadi's is a good prevention step. We can also take steps to address disease-causing problems at their source. Rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns due to global warming are increasing the spread of diseases such as malaria and West Nile virus.

This young man is an inmate in a prison in El Salvador. Here he is celebrating with his classmates their completion of “I Am Ready”, a CRS rehabilitation course that provides inmates with job readiness and social skills. Now, as they prepare to leave prison, they have a sense of self-worth and newfound abilities to help them realize their life dreams.

These young men, like millions of other young adults, have grown up in a society where disparity is the usual way of life. Where the land and its natural resources belong to a small number of people while the majority live in dire conditions with limited natural resources and little access to meet basic human needs. In such desperate times, some migrate; some turn to a life of crime; some waste away. Without intervention, both the people and the land become underdeveloped and degraded; but intervention can turn that around.