The hunger that lies ahead can be much worse than the hunger of today and yesterday. It is a direct result of neglect, especially by those whose main mission in life is the mission of One who came to bring glad tidings to the poor. It is a direct result of apathy, especially by Christians who could sleep peacefully while one in every five of his neighbors experienced hunger. It is a direct result of leadership without heart for Filipino farmers and without vision for their development.

So much noise has been made from so many leaders. Politicians cannot agree on all sorts of issues, on all sorts of candidates, on all sorts of governance. Bishops cannot agree on the consequences of right and wrong, cannot put names and faces to the thieves in our society. Businesses cannot agree on the future, whether it is best to invest abroad and surrender our small and medium businesses to South Koreans and the smallest of our retail trade to the largest of our industries to China. And we have enriched Thai, Vietnamese and Indian rice farmers when we subsidize anyway to the tens of billions the rice we sell to the tens of millions of poor Filipinos.

Poverty and hunger have been in our midst for so long that the non-poor and the non-hungry have become blind and insensitive to these. We cannot take care of the weak among us, of the marginalized and the old, the sick and the vulnerable young. We deserve the condemnation not only of the world who sneer at our pathetic posture but of all the gods and demigods depicted by statues and immortalized by rituals. We participate by our tolerance in the genocide of the poor, and willingly pay soldiers to keep them at bay when they grow hungry and restive.

Quarterly reports on hunger are published regularly. They do not merit beyond a cursory attention, not even from shepherds of men who are more sensitive to breaches in protocol, to external forms of obedience and piety, to the absurdly peripheral while God's children go hungry. The body of bishops who are the primary face of the Catholic Church in the Philippines can cause the removal of a presidents, or their extended stays. They can also defeat hunger if they are at all focused on it.

Government does take more than a cursory look at reports on hunger. Public officials are more sensitive than the ordained because they can be booted out of office every three years, or removed by people power. But official intervention has been quite ineffective, influencing a few percentage points up or down without any master plan for eradicating hunger. It is as though government is more afraid of its survival versus the appalling shame of having Filipinos experience hunger in the land of plenty.

We are a cursed people that cannot be a nation, not when we tolerate hunger of brother and sister Filipino. All these posturing about the economy, about Christianity, about democracy, all these are hypocrisy of the highest order. But worse than the hypocrisy of leadership is the stain on our souls. Hunger is a universal affliction, but most scandalous in a Catholic country. More than anything else, the hunger of millions of Filipinos is the deadliest accountability of its religious. How many have died, how many have suffered, how many have killed, stolen and fought to mitigate the hunger of their families? And we strut about our pro-life beliefs?

If I were Muslim, I would confront my religious leaders if they allow the hungry among Islam's children to suffer without intervention. If I were Buddhist, I cannot but do the same. But I am Christian and Catholic, and I can only send out muted screams in anger and shame at the apathy or cowardice of my religious leaders who cannot galvanize communal action, even revolution, to save a hungry people. There is less need to convert people to Catholicism than there is a need to feed His sheep.

In the heart of our trials and tribulations is the moral decadence we have allowed to creep into our souls and dominate our society. Yes, it is our decadence, yours and mine as individuals, and also yours and mine as people of God, as members of our respective faiths. While we wallow in our subservience to evil, I wonder if our moral guides and teachers, our pastoral leaders have any accountability at all to the covenant of evangelization they vowed to execute. In such a corrupt and immoral nation, can the sheep be so disobedient to their shepherds, or are the shepherds being followed even in their sins of commission and omission?

Bishops and politicians share a common mission--to tend their constituents in a manner and spirit faithful to the highest ideals of faith and state. Ethics is their lowest common denominator and the laws of the land follow closely the Ten Commandments, from parental respect to thievery, killing, lies, and adultery. What is happening to us, then, that both bishops and politicians govern in failure?

The shortcomings of our formal hierarchies, however, must not stop us from striving for our own compliance to the laws of God and man. The lack of inspiring examples from the highest of leaderships is compensated somewhat by the humble yet determined efforts of many who serve below them. More mayors and governors are showing how they can trigger progress in their respective areas despite national government, just as lowly nuns and priests quietly try to reflect the missionary spirit of their faith as they serve the poor.

Whether we are motivated by faith or by simple love of country, we face a trial ahead that will confront Filipino stomachs and lives. As ordinary citizens, there seems little we can do. But as ordinary citizens working as one body, there is nothing that we cannot do. If our convergence is not triggered by inspiring leadership, let it be triggered by the nobility of a common cause.

Let us feed His sheep, the least among us, by never forgetting when we awake each day that the hungry is out there and increasing, that the sick is out there and dying, that the landless and the homeless are out there and have been severed from their human dignity. There is only one antidote to a hungry and impoverished people--the caring and sharing of those who are not.

If only to be on the right side in the judgment of nations, we must remember that our measure is not our great personal accomplishments but the simple obligation of being our brother's keeper.

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