Catholics are still expected to abstain from meat or make another sacrifice on Fridays . . .
Friday — like Sunday — is never an “ordinary” day. Friday is the day when Jesus suffered and died on the cross to atone for our sins. Friday is the day when Jesus won our salvation and made possible our adoption as children of God. Thus, the Church has encouraged us to focus, each Friday, on both gratitude and repentance.
Since Friday is the “anniversary day” of our new life, we should offer extra prayer. We should meditate on the mystery of our redemption — and especially on Christ’s sufferings. When our sinfulness is faced with God’s mercy, the only appropriate response is repentance. It is an action of the will, but it should be accompanied by outward expressions like almsgiving, fasting and acts of piety.
Until recently, it was the law of the Church to abstain from meat on Fridays throughout the year. Indeed, from the earliest days, the Church has kept Friday as a day of penance. We find this prescribed in one of the most ancient Christian documents, the Didache, composed perhaps within 50 years of Our Lord’s Ascension to heaven.
In 1966, the U.S. bishops removed the requirement for year-round abstinence from meat on Friday. They stated that “the renunciation of the eating of meat is not always and for everyone the most effective means of practicing penance.” In so doing, the bishops gave each of us the responsibility that “we discipline ourselves” with forms of fasting and penance that are most meaningful in our own lives.
Canon Law affirms that Fridays are still days of penance for the whole Church. What we do, however, is up to us. Many families continue to forgo eating meat on Friday — a long-revered custom that we would be wise to make our own. We may make small pilgrimages every Friday to pray at a church across town. Or we may take on special acts of charity.
“It would bring greater glory to God and good to souls,” the bishops wrote, “if Fridays found our people doing volunteer work in hospitals, visiting the sick, serving the needs of the aged and lonely, instructing the young in the faith and participating as Christians in community affairs.”
Mike Aquilina is an award-winning Catholic writer. Regis Flaherty is a prolific writer and consultant. This column is reprinted with permission from their book “The How-To Book of Catholic Devotions” (Our Sunday Visitor, 2000).