For poor Filipinos, every day is Ash Wednesday

How can you fast when you have nothing to eat anyway?

Maribel Cayubit, 34, lives in a shanty in the suburbs of Manila with her eight children. (Photo by Mark Saludes)

Manila:  For Catholics, Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten season, is a day of fasting and penance. For poor Filipinos, however, it is just another day in their daily struggle to survive.

"How can we fast? We don't even have something to eat," said Maribel Cayubit, a 34-year-old mother of eight children whose husband died in August last year, one of the casualties of the government's war against narcotics.

The family lives in a shanty of scrap wood and plastic sheets along Manila's old railway system. They have no access to clean water. The eldest of the children, 16-year-old Jenny, has to fetch water from an old artesian well across the railway.

Cayubit has no job and cannot look for one because nobody will take care of her children, the youngest of which is only two months old.

She used to be a recipient of the government's program for the poor, but since Jenny stopped attending school, which is one of the conditions of the program, Cayubit was taken off the list of recipients.

During the day, the children scavenge for used plastic bottles and discarded items they sell for food. If they are lucky, they have lunch and dinner, but during most days, Cayubit and the children only have a meal before going to sleep.

"At least we are not hungry when we sleep," she said. Hunger is a daily sacrifice Cayubit, and many other Filipinos, experience, even outside the Lenten season.

A survey conducted by pollster Social Weather Stations in December 2016 revealed that Filipino families who went hungry in the last three months of last year numbered 3.1 million.

Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo of Manila challenged Filipinos not just to fast, a practice still done by Filipino Catholics during Lent, but to "share the life that they have to those who are in need."

"We just don't abstain from eating, or restrain ourselves from watching movies, or from shopping. We make sure that our sacrifice benefits others," said the prelate.

He urged Filipino Catholics to visit "places of mercy" — slums, charity houses, and orphanages — and "listen and learn from the less fortunate in society."

"Ash Wednesday tells us to repent and ask for forgiveness, but as Christians we also have the responsibility to save others not just ourselves," said Archbishop Pabillo.

In Cayubit's case, hardship did not deter her from continuing to live her faith. She teaches her children to pray, especially for Jenny who now works as a household help.

On Wednesday, the family attended Mass and received ashes on their foreheads, praying that someday fasting will only be on every Ash Wednesday.

Source: UCAN