Family Fast Day Appeal
This Family Fast Day, you can make a difference to families like Waré’s.
Reflections by Elizabeth Carey, Parish CAFOD Representative
Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by today’s intractable problems? Geopolitical instability, a changing climate, longer-term viability of the NHS, the growing friction between taxpayers and benefit recipients, budget cuts that threaten to hollow out critical service delivery in education, law enforcement, support provision for the elderly or people with special needs. These are a few concerning stories in the news, along with the endless debates around immigration. Modern society depends on migrants and they enrich life in London. Many in our parish are migrants. Nonetheless, we are told by some politicians and online newsfeeds that migration threatens our society. Add to our list of reasons to worry the hideous conflicts in Palestine, Ukraine or Sudan with their millions of innocent victims—men, women and children, the elderly and weak. Closer to home, cyberattacks multiply, while AI threatens to make more of us unemployed even as it accelerates break-throughs in healthcare treatments. The list of worries goes on. Solutions that emerge seem few and far between, or they lack scale.
How do we avoid getting sucked down into a pit of despair?
We carry on with our own lives and day-to-day obligations, hopefully punctuated with joys and companionship. One remedy for heavy-heartedness is spending less time online and more time serving other people in the real world. Service to others can be organised, like volunteering with a charity, possibly one of those based here in our own church like the SVP, Order of Malta or Legion of Mary, or helping out with the life of the Spanish Place parish.
Other well-known charities that depend on volunteers are to be found at Caritas Westminster or the Passage. Many of us give of ourselves more privately, for example by helping elderly neighbours; looking after children so that parents can hold down a job; or serving as school governors so that the young people in our community can get their education in good, safe schools. The people we see around us are not the only neighbours we are called to serve. For every vulnerable person on our streets, millions more live in places we can’t see, and likely couldn’t even find on the map.
Take Waré, a woman living in drought-stricken Ethiopia, whose story CAFOD has chosen to highlight for Harvest Fast Day 2025. Waré used to walk for five hours each day to fetch water for her family. She had no choice and even had to do it while pregnant. Fortunately, CAFOD supported Waré’s community to install an underground water storage tank that can sustain 300 families through the normal dry season, and eases life during droughts.
Who delivered the life-changing water tank? We did, for CAFOD is us. Making life-changing contributions to people far away, whose living conditions we can scarcely imagine, is exactly what Jesus meant by the instruction to “Love your neighbour as yourself”.
Serving our neighbours wherever they may be is a powerful antidote to helplessness or feeling that we have no solutions to offer. We all have contributions to make through our care, prayers and acts of generosity. Giving to CAFOD (Caritas International in England and Wales) is an excellent way to take action and express our love of neighbour tangibly. Please join me once again in supporting CAFOD’s Harvest Fast Day appeal on 5-6 October. You can do this by:
·Giving online at CAFOD - Catholic international development charity (please indicate St. James’s Spanish Place and the post code W1U 3QY after you submit payment details);
· Scanning the QR code on the CAFOD poster, donation envelopes or on lanyards worn by volunteers;
· Using St. James’s contactless giving machines.
Choose the Second Collection option; [Note: This option does not allow Gift Aid] or
· Giving by cash or cheque in the special collections at the end of each mass on 4-5 October.
Please take an envelope as you leave church on the weekend of 27-28 September.
However you give, please add Gift Aid if you are eligible.
Thank you for your generosity and your prayers. Bringing hope and solutions to our neighbours around the world is a gift that keeps on giving. It empowers us and reminds us that we can be agents of positive change, both close to home and far away. Certainly, that’s a far better news headline.
