Poverty, illness and loneliness among people—these are widespread problems of modern civilization, including in our town on the Bóbr. Many people have been hurt by life itself, and their characters have been twisted and distorted. Some simply reject an outstretched helping hand; others are grateful for ordinary human kindness, for a moment of conversation, a smile and a warm word. “Feed the hungry,” says Holy Scripture. For human biological needs cannot be deceived. Evangelization is integrally connected with a higher level of human awareness.
Who comes here? Homeless people who sleep even at the railway station or in some unheated shacks. Pensioners who, after paying their housing and energy costs, do not have enough for three meals a day—and a hot dinner costs the most. Lonely people living in a corner of relatives’ homes, the unemployed, people with disabilities, the elderly and the helpless, who cannot count on help from their close relatives. Also alcoholics, people who have lost all hope of improving their own fate, simply passively waiting for death, isolated from their surroundings, sometimes even seriously ill and aware of their thoughtlessness and loneliness in a crowd indifferent to their fate. People seeking ordinary contact with another human being, longing to open themselves to the world and their surroundings. No one drives them away from here; they have their “five minutes” to voice their grievances and compare their own fate with that of other people. For, after all, fundamentally we are all social beings and we gravitate toward those around us, even though our surroundings may be bad, savage, desperate, indifferent...
That is why, purely selflessly and for a very long time now, I have been helping to cook meals at Father Edward Bober’s parish canteen for the poor. I was inspired by the idea and its social and charitable mission.
M.K. (name known to the Editors)