I was asked yesterday by a family member whether or not abstaining from meat on friday was mandatory during Lent. They also asked that if meat was eaten on friday during lent was it considered to be sinful.
Abstinence from meat on friday during lent and all fridays through out the year has been a long standing tradition in the Church. The church teaches that what fridays in Lent are to Easter so every friday should be to every Sunday celebration through out the year. There should be some penitential practice that helps us focus and renew our longing for the celebration of the Lord's supper on Sundays that celebration which finds it origin in the Easter reality of the resurrection.
Abstinence from meat on fridays during lent was at one time bound under the penalty of sin. In 1966, the church in her wisdom and pastoral concern for the faithful and in her desire to move the faithful by exercise of their freedom lifted the penalty of sin from eating meat on friday.
The church invites us to continue the practice of abstaining from meat on Fridays, especially on Ash Wed., fridays during lent, and on Good Friday. The Church holds abstinence in the first place as a practice of penance on those days. However, the church does not wish to limit the faithfuls' practice of penance and invites the faithful to perform some act of penance worthy of the meaning behind the friday as the day the Lord died for our sins.
As Hosea reminds us, we must always seek to return to the Lord our God and we shall blossom like the lily. Practice of penance is that which enables us to free ourselves from self and attachment to worldly things and draw us closer to our dependence on God. Penance and abstinence acts like a fertilizer with weed killer, freeing us to blossom before the Lord and thus becoming that which shines with radiance for all loving the Lord with all our heart, with all our mind, and with all our strength.
Fasting and abstinence doesn't weaken us but strengthens our resolve to love and thus live to give our self as Christ gives us himself daily to us, "take and eat this is my body give for you."
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