Becoming "providence" for our fellow human beings

55. The practice of the Jubilees refers fundamentally to Divine Providence and to the history of salvation(⁷⁹). On the basis of this relationship, hunger and malnutrition may be considered to be a consequence of human sin, revealed in the very first verses of the book of Genesis: "The Lord said to Cain: "Where is Abel your brother?' He said, "I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?' And the Lord said, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength; you shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth'" (Gen. 4:9-12).

The image given here expresses with perfect clarity the relationship between respect for the dignity of the human person and the fertility of the ecological receptacle — the earth — that had now been sullied and broken. This relationship resounds like an echo throughout the whole of human history and probably formed the theological background of the relations of causality examined earlier when discussing hunger and malnutrition. Everything happens as if the unpredictabilities of nature, often so unfavourable to the human being, are amplified by the consequences of an inordinate thirst for power and profit and by the "structures of sin" from which they stem. By turning away from God's creative plan, the human being has only a shortsighted view of self, one's brothers and sisters and the future, which condemns one to the experience of the wanderer, which affects the human race: "... what have you done to your brother?"