Office for Social Ministry
“Especially in this Jubilee Year, the Lord’s example is a yardstick that should guide our actions and our service: We are called to share our bread, to multiply hope and to proclaim the coming of God’s kingdom.” (Pope Leo XIV, feast of Corpus Christi homily, June 2025)
When we pray the inspired words, “Give us this day our daily bread,” for many in Hawaii it is a hopeful prayer for survival. Food distribution lines have grown longer, and more families are facing the painful choice between paying rent or buying groceries.
Our local nonprofits are doing extraordinary work. Aloha Harvest, for example, “rescues” food — turning surplus meals from hotels and groceries into nourishment for individuals and families who would otherwise go without. The Hawaii Foodbank stretches every donation across hundreds of community partners, while the Institute for Human Services offers 800 hot meals a day to houseless neighbors downtown.
These are not just social services. They are everyday multiplications of the loaves — signs that God’s kingdom is breaking bread in our midst.
And yet, the need keeps growing. Demand for food assistance in Hawaii has jumped dramatically as federal support is being drastically reduced. Nonprofits are scrambling to do more with less, just when more individuals and families are falling through the cracks.
Pope Leo XIV spoke in June to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, calling hunger not just a misfortune but an injustice: “The continuing tragedy of widespread hunger and malnutrition (is) sadder and more shameful when we realize that … so many of the world’s poor still lack their daily bread.”
He reminded us that Christ himself showed the way in the miracle of the loaves and fishes: “(The) real miracle performed by Christ was to show that the key to overcoming hunger lies in sharing rather than in greedily hoarding.”
But Pope Leo also reminded us that hunger is not always accidental. In one of his most searing remarks, he said: “Starving people to death is a very cheap way of waging war.”
Around the world, food is sometimes weaponized in conflict — fields destroyed, crops burned, aid blocked. While here in Hawaii we may not face those battlefields, we too suffer when safety nets are weakened and systems fail, when Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are threatened, when kupuna lose access to healthy food, when inflation drives families to impossible choices and parents skip meals so their children can eat.
Hunger, whether by bullet or by budget, is always an assault on dignity.
So how can we as Christians, the body of Christ, respond? Pope Leo urged the UN food agency to put faith into action: “It is therefore imperative to move from words to deeds, putting at the center effective measures that will enable these people to look at their present and their future with confidence and serenity.”
That means supporting local social ministries with our time, talent and treasure. It means opening our parish kitchens, halls or even parking lots as places of welcome and nourishment. It means lending our voices to protect food security programs like SNAP, because public policy is not just paperwork — it is a moral statement about and commitment to whom we choose to care for.
Pope Leo also insisted that without stability and peace, there can be no sustainable food security: “It will not be possible to guarantee resilient agricultural and food systems, nor to ensure a healthy, accessible and sustainable food supply for all.”
It begins with recognizing our vulnerable and sharing what we have with others in need. For example, on Oahu, parishes such as St. Augustine, St. Ann, Sts. Peter and Paul, and the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa support nonprofits like Aloha Harvest, Hawaii Foodbank and IHS to be compassionate and build resilience through collaboration, embodying the communion we celebrate at the altar.
As Pope Leo preached at this year’s feast of Corpus Christi, “Christ is God’s answer to our human hunger.” At every Mass, Christ feeds us not so that we remain full alone, but so that we are sent out, strengthened to break bread with others. He multiples himself in us, that we might multiply hope in the world.
Hawaii’s nonprofits are already multiplying loaves, but they cannot do it alone. The challenge of food insecurity is immense, but so is the miracle that happens when all people choose to share.
Let us all participate with them in the multiplication miracle of sharing so that when we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” we know we are helping God answer that prayer — not only for ourselves, but for our neighbors in need.
Mahalo,
Your friends in the Office for Social Ministry