227 God, he who possesses God wants for nothing, if he himself is not found
wanting before God.”7

2831 But the presence of those who hunger because they lack bread opens up another profound meaning of this petition. The drama of hunger in the world calls Christians who pray sincerely to exercise responsibility toward their brethren, both in their personal behaviour and in their solidarity with the human family. This petition of the Lord’s Prayer cannot be isolated from the

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parables of the poor man Lazarus and of the LastJudgement.”8

2832 As leaven in the dough, the newness of the Kingdom should make the earth ‘rise’ by the Spirit of Christ.”9 This must be shown

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by the establishment of justice in personal and social, economic

and international relations, without ever forgetting that there are no just structures without people who want to be just.

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2833 ‘Our’ bread is the ‘one’ loaf for the ‘many’. In the Beatitudes

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‘poverty’ is the virtue of sharing: it calls us to communicate and

share both material and spiritual goods, not by coercion but out of love, so that the abundance of some may remedy the needs of others. 2834 ‘Pray and work.”2’ ‘Pray as if everything depended on God

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and work as if everything depended on you.”22 Even when we

have done our work, the food we receive is still a gift from our Father; it is good to ask him for it and to thank him, as Christian families do when saying grace at meals.

2835 This petition, with the responsibility it involves, also applies to another hunger from which men are perishing: ‘Man does not live by bread alone, but... by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’,’23 that is, by the Word he speaks and the Spirit h breathes forth. Christians must make every effort ‘to proclaim th

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good news to the poor’. There is a famine on earth, ‘not a famin

of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of th LORD’.’24 For this reason the specifically Christian sense of th’ fourth petition concerns the Bread of Life: the Word of Go