World Central Kitchen

First Sunday of Lent

February 22, 2026

Gen 2:7-9; 3:1-7; Rom 5:12-19; Matt 4:1-11

(From the Camino)

We have begun our sacred journey of Lent, a time of being led by the Spirit for discovering abundance within the desert. I was reminded this past week in a conversation with one of you about a journey, a pilgrimage in my own life, a pilgrimage that some of you have similarly undertake called the Camino de Santiago, the “Way of St. James.” The Way of St James is a pilgrimage route across northern Spain in the footsteps of the Apostle James. It passes through abundant fields, mountains, and deserts, and forests. The walk lasted a little less than forty days, and like Jesus, when I finished, I was hungry! Even though I passed through some of the best gastronomic and viniculture regions of Spain, when I got back home, the first thing I did was dismantle a big, disgusting, delicious, Big Mac.

While on Camino, providential, almost magical moments appear that you have to experience to believe. I would like to share a Camino story.

Nearing the end of my pilgrimage, I found myself passing through a green, mountainous region of Spain called Galicia, when I stopped for lunch at a small café restaurant. I sat down at table with a woman about my age who I learned lived in Washington, D.C. She had just graduated culinary school and hoped to find work in the field of food justice, particularly addressing the issue of food deserts in cities.

Suddenly she stopped and said, “Look at that table. I think that is Jose Andres.”

I replied, “Who’s Jose Andres?”

Jose Andres, I learned, was one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 people in the world, a celebrity chef and founder of World Central Kitchen that provides food in natural disasters and humanitarian crises, most recently in Gaza. He also own a number of restaurants in Washington, DC, and is credited with popularizing Spanish small plate dining, tapas, in the United States.

She and I walked over to the table, and darn if it wasn’t Jose Andres! He was walking a portion of the Camino with his daughter for her birthday. I watched them exchange contact information for when they returned to the United States. I watched this young woman meet one of her heroes and her dream come true!

In our scripture today, we find ourselves with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, which we might say is God’s “World Central Kitchen.”

“Out of the ground the LORD God made various trees grow
that were delightful to look at and good for food,
with the tree of life in the middle of the garden
and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:9-10)

Why did God make all this good food available to Adam and Eve except for this one tree at the center of the kitchen? Perhaps it is because God desires us always to remain hungry, and to reserve this special spiritual hunger solely God alone. Our desire for God is a transcendent, supernatural hunger that no created or material good can satisfy. Only God can fulfill our human needs.

As the Devil’s appetizer, Adam and Eve seek to satisfy this craving to be like God, to provide for themselves, and so they eat the forbidden fruit. At this, what once was an abundant garden Adam and Even found turned into a food desert.

In the Gospel, Jesus enters the food desert of the world to reveal the true hungers of the heart. Where Adam and Eve’s disobedience turned all our garden’s into deserts, by his faithfulness, Jesus shows us the hidden abundance of faithfulness and love. He shows us that God provides.

I was reminded this past week of two graces I learned on Camino, two gifts that God provides without disappointment.

The first is this: God always provides a way. Whenever I say “no way” to God, God says “yes way.” Wherever you are, wherever you come from, wherever you are going, no matter what obstacles or hungers you are experiencing, God always makes a way. Adam and Even succumbed to the temptation that the devil plates for Jesus, namely, whenever we doubt that God will make a way, we choose our own way instead or to take a shortcut. It appears to offer satisfaction, just quicker and cheaper, but whenever you are tempted to take that shortcut in the kitchen, rarely if ever do things turn out the way you hope. Can we not trust that God is going to make a way for us, St. Leo and St. Vincent? We are two ingredients God is going to mix up and make something special. It is worth having patience and not cutting corners.

The second grace is this: God always provides companions for the way. Adam and Eve were created for one another because God declared it was not good to be alone. Some people are with us on the way for years, decades, like a spouse, a sibling, a best friend, while others are there for only a brief time, enough for a meal or cup of coffee. In the end, if we remain faithful to the way, there is enough room at God’s table in heaven.

The word “companion,” com-panion, means, literally, the one you share your bread. The great temptation here is to go at life alone, or to despair that God really wants you to be alone. It is a lie. God know that man “does not live by bread alone” (Mt 4:4), but that we are made for companionship, to share bread with others.

In the most extraordinary way, God becomes our daily companion through becoming living bread for us, the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. The Eucharist, the eternal banquet of the Lord, is this World Central Kitchen, on earth as it is in heaven. In receiving this body we become his body.

God made our heart to be hungry and placed us in a garden that is good for food so that we might become food for good.