Expert: Charlie B - 3/13/2009

Question
can you give me the passage on which catholics are not to eat meat on fridays during lent

Answer
Stacie,
Thanks for your question.  I cannot give you the Bible passage on your question.  Why?  It doesn't exist.

 Here's the intent or the spirit of why Catholics don't eat meat on Fridays.

FASTING appears numerous times the Bible.  Fasting involves doing without food, eating plain bread and drinking water (which my wife did today, Friday and every Friday during Lent), much as the Jews perform during Passover with unleavened bread & bitter herbs.   Giving up just meat is a form of fasting, or denying oneself which arguably makes you stronger ... does that make sense?

Lent, in Christian tradition, is the period of the liturgical year leading up to Easter. Conventionally it is described as being forty days long, though different denominations calculate the forty days differently. In many denominations it is observed as a period of fasting and prayer, and this practice was virtually universal in Christendom until the Protestant Reformation. The forty days represent the time that, according to the Bible, Jesus spent in the desert before the beginning of his public ministry, where he endured temptation by Satan.

The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer — through prayer, penitence, almsgiving and self-denial — for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, which recalls the events linked to the Passion of Christ and culminates in Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Here's some background:
God’s first command to man with respect to abstinence occurred in the Garden of Eden. Gen 2:17 “

God commanded in the Torah dietary (“kosher”) laws that the people Israel were to abstain from eating particular kinds of animals, Lev 11, Deut 14 and that Jews fast as a penance on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Lev 16:29 “And it shall be a statute to you for ever that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves.” The ancient rabbis understood “afflict yourselves” as a command to fast. Jews fasted in a spirit of penance on similar occasions. Jgs 20:26 “Then all the people of Israel, the whole army, went up and came to Bethel and wept; they sat there before the Lord, and fasted that day until evening.” God further commanded abstinence in the Jewish Passover celebration. Deut 16:3 “You shall eat no leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction.”

Christ fasted forty days in the desert, during which time He took neither food nor drink. Mt 4:2 “And [Christ] fasted forty days and forty nights.” He told the Jews in the synagogue at Capernaum, Jn 6:51 “The bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Christians have abstained from eating meat on Fridays in commemoration of His passion and death since the First Century.

In Christ’s time, the Pharisees fasted twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. In His parable the Pharisee prayed, Lk 18:12 “I fast twice a week.” Christians, following ancient Jewish traditions of fast and abstinence for penance, observed the law of fasting on Wednesdays and Friday abstinence from the time of Christ’s Crucifixion. The Didache (Teachings of the Apostles), chapter 8: “But let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second and fifth day of the week. Rather, fast on the fourth day and the Preparation.” (Wednesday and Friday).

Church Teaching
As the centuries passed, the original requirement to fast twice a week was reduced. But, during the Church’s entire history, until 1966, all Fridays have been obligatory days of abstinence from meat on pain of mortal sin.

Since 1966, All Fridays during Lent remain obligatory days of abstinence from meat. All other Fridays remain days of penance. The ordinary penance is absention from meat. However, on non-Lenten Fridays, the faithful may substitute another penance. The substituted penance should involve a level of sacrifice comparable to abstention from meat.

When Friday coincides with a solemnity we are dispensed from penance, in order that we might concentrate more fully on the occasion for the solemnity. All Holy Days of Obligation are solemnities.

Pope Paul VI published Paenitemini, the Apostolic Constitution on Penance, February 17, 1966. It provided for abstinence from meat for all the faithful over 14 years of age.

Paenitemini, Chapter III, section C, Norm II, states: “1. The time of Lent preserves its penitential character. The days of penitence to be observed under obligation through-out the Church are all Fridays and Ash Wednesday, that is to say the first days of “Grande Quaresima” (Great Lent), according to the diversity of the rite. Their substantial observance binds gravely. 2. Apart from the faculties referred to in VI and VIII regarding the manner of fulfilling the precept of penitence on such days, abstinence is to be observed on every Friday which does not fall on a day of obligation, while abstinence and fast are to be observed on Ash Wednesday or, according to local practice, on the first day of ’Great Lent’ and on Good Friday.”

My wife of 23 years prepared tonight (a Friday) an especially delicious vegetable soup with bread for our family of six, and I was satisfied.  It doesn't take much to ...give a little (up)  :-)
God bless,
Charlie