mostly in Africa, are immunized, with even their doctors and nurses unprotected against the deathly risks of battling Covid.

Hardly the holiness our Lord intended when He blessed vaccine R&D. Nor is it the sharing Christ teaches in feeding the five thousand as Pope Francis expounds in his Gospel reflection, published in The Anawim Way journal:

“Faced with the cry of hunger — all types of ‘hunger’ — of many brothers and sisters in every part of the world, we cannot be detached and calm spectators. The proclamation of Christ, Bread of eternal life, requires a generous commitment of solidarity toward the poor, the weak, the least ones, the defenseless.”

Self-sinking self-seeking

Plainly, the papal call for compassion went widely unheeded, especially in the wealthy West, which amassed jabs by the hundreds of millions, even as the Covax initiative spearheaded by the World Health Organization for 2 billion vaccines get to low-income nations this year, languished with mammoth funding and vaccine gaps.

Well, guess what: nations that hoped to end the pandemic within their borders, even as huge swathes of humanity drowned in rising waves of Covid, have now seen that selfseeking could be self-sinking.

As infections surged in largely unvaccinated countries, the mammoth multiplicity of Covid carriers there spawned far more variants than there would have been if ample immunization stopped the virus rapidly spreading its mutations. Those variants have now triggered new Covid surges in wealthy nations ready to ease restrictions amid nationwide vaccination.

That’s Lesson No. 4 from the miracle of the loaves and fishes: if we don’t share, we may all starve.

St. Paul extolled in the second reading from his Letter to the Ephesians (Eph 4:1-6) “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” He safeguards His children who care for one another, especially the poor. Those who don’t shall cut themselves off from His protection.