Every month Fr Chris Chatteris SJ reflects on Pope Leo XIV’s prayer intention
Intention: Let us pray that everyone, from large producers to small consumers, be committed to avoid wasting food, and to ensure that everyone has access to quality food.
We are an odd species. Why would we carelessly waste something upon which our lives depend?
From the person who regularly leaves half the food on their plate uneaten, to restaurants which consign leftovers to the bin, to retailers who reject fresh produce which doesn’t look perfect — many of us seem to do it.
We waste food. We also waste the water which we need in order to produce the food. This is strange behaviour indeed.
One source of our wastefulness, at least in the modern context, is that for many developed and developing societies that are not trapped in situations of war or induced hunger, famine and scarcity are fading memories. To humanity’s credit, we now have a more food-secure world than we had in the past, even the recent past.
But the lived experience and the remembrance of scarcity instil frugality. I recall this in my parents who had experienced rationing during the Second World War. For them, waste was anathema. A couple of generations on, such virtues can seem to many quaint and even unnecessary.
Enough for everyone
At a deeper level perhaps, when we waste, we are unconsciously reacting to an underlying truth, namely that the earth is abundant and there is in fact more than enough for everyone.
The theological underpinning of this is our belief that the Lord does provide. After all, in the Book of Exodus the Lord provided manna and quails and sustained his people for 40 years. In the Gospel we hear that there were 12 baskets of fragments left over after the miraculous feeding of the five thousand.
The catch here is that the actual practice of the truth of God’s overflowing generosity must be anchored in a culture of sharing and caring. If we share the food which God gives us for the sake of the common good, and if we care for this inestimable gift, then all of us will be satisfied and all will be well.
This includes the environment, since the less waste there is, the less food needs to be produced, and so the less land and fewer other precious natural resources are needed.
A time of war also prompts the question of why we waste. It is worth considering how much investment in water and food security we could make with the vast sums currently being wasted on missiles, and the missiles that shoot down other missiles.
During Lent we had an opportunity to reflect on this, to ask ourselves why we waste God’s gifts. Avoiding waste for the sake of sharing and to honour the gifts we receive from the Lord is an excellent Lenten practice, but it is also something which should characterise the life of a Christian as a matter of course.
- Pray with the Pope: God Provides, We Squander - May 9, 2026
- Pray with the Pope: Understand and back our priests - April 6, 2026
- Pray with the Pope: The terrible price of rattling sabres - March 3, 2026
