Friday, 12/5/14
Today is Friday, and it just struck me that Catholics were
once better at observing Fridays than they were about Sundays. They’d use any
old excuse for skipping Sunday Mass, but through their lives they never ate
meat on Friday.
I remember once eating meat on Friday as a thirteen-year-old.
Our Boy Scout troop bussed us to a Masonic lodge on a Friday, and they served
us baloney sandwiches. With everyone telling me I had to do it, I took a couple
of bites, feeling I was committing the worst mortal sin in my life.
Then in 1966 Pope Paul VI issued an encyclical that allowed
Catholics to eat meat on Fridays. The Pope told us to honor the day on which
our Savior died by performing some other penitential acts. We soon forgot about
abstaining from eating meat, and we soon forgot about doing something else
instead. Perhaps we should get busy now on doing something worthwhile on Fridays in appreciation for
what Jesus did for us on a Friday.
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