Among the Filipinos?
By Luis B. GorgonioFormer Board Member, SanibLakas Foundation; member, LightShare e-Mail Group; and staff member, Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights)
ONE Sunday morning in December 2004, the vicinity of Mt. Carmel Church in Quezon City was bustling with mass goers. Street vendors selling religious items and lanterns occupied corners under mango trees in the churchyard. Fine cars of different shining colors belonging to residents in New Manila filled the parking area and even some parts of Broadway Street sidewalks. Inside the church the mid-morning mass was taking place. The angelic voice of the choir filled every corner of the church. The songs probably lifted to heavenly heights the hearts of those inside. Not long after, the priest broke the bread of the Eucharist and invited the people to partake of it, calling to mind Christ's greatest act of self-giving. On that very moment, Christ's eternal light seemed to shine inside Mt. Carmel Church.
Loloi Gorgonio
It was a brilliant day outside. Though half-hidden in thin white clouds, the sun emitted a cheerful glow that belonged to the Christmas Season. But the sun's radiance failed to touch the corner of Broadway St. and Aurora Boulevard, about a hundred meters away from Mt. Carmel Church. Huge posts and beams of the Light Rail Transit’s elevated tracks along Aurora Boulevard cast their darkest shadows on the spot where a skinny woman, about 80 years of age, etched out a figure of hunger-beaten humiliation.
Her chest was slumped against her knees; her belly against her thighs. Her whole body seemed to curl up around her empty stomach in an attempt to appease the biting hunger that was now beginning to sap off all her strength.
She used to chase cars for alms around that corner. But at that moment, she had to let go of any chance to grab a coin that dropped off from passing vehicles. She had to summon all her energy to deaden the rawest longing for food. If she succeeded, she could go begging again. She must conquer hunger this time, not with bread but with the deepest hope that it would just pass away with the minutes.
She certainly was not doing the theatrics able-bodied beggars do to get pity. Her pain was visible as she leaned against a lamppost for support. It was not the kind of pain that called for mercy.
It was one characterized by an overwhelming determination to conquer painitself.
The breaking of the Eucharistic bread inside the church and the image of the hunger-beaten old woman disturbed me and plunged me into deep thought. Exposed to the same experience, any observer could instantly feel there was something fundamentally wrong here, somehow.
I remembered one of the prefaces to the words of consecration: "Blessed be God for we have this bread to offer, fruit of the earth, which human hands have made, let it become for us the body of .Christ.
Suddenly, I realized that the bread of the Eucharist is the same bread of the economy. No contemporary theologian can deny this simple theological truth. That.some.people are. hungry points to the fact that bread has not been broken and shared among the people. It also points to the sad reality that the Eucharist has not been genuinely celebrated in our time.
There is no Eucharist without the breaking of the bread. If the breaking of the bread on the Eucharistic table were only a dream that has yet to find home in reality, then Godspeed!
But if we have come to believe that it is perfectly okay to celebrate the Eucharist in the midst of hunger, then something must be fundamentally wrong somehow. 
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