REGARDING the decision of the Catholic Church in England and Wales to return, on September 16 2011 to the practice of not eating meat on Fridays, I commend the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales for returning last week to the obligatory practice of abstaining from eating meat on Fridays. The allowance, after Vatican II, for self-motivated substitutions to this rule, resulted in the widespread belief that the rule itself had been relaxed. It was a case of our Bishops putting the cart before the horse.
Sacred scripture and Catholic tradition teach that fasting and abstinence is a great help to avoid sin and all that leads to it. We first hear of the commandment to fast in Genesis where man is prohibited from eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. After Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden, fasting is proposed, in the stories of Ezra and Nineveh, as an instrument to restore our friendship with God. In the New Testament, Jesus brings to light the true and most profound meaning of fasting which is to do the will of the Heavenly Father who “sees in secret and will reward you”(Mt. 6:18).
Fasting and abstinence not only bring certain benefits to our physical well-being, they are, for Christians, primarily a means of mortifying our egoism, avoiding sin, and opening our hearts to the Love of God and our fellow man.
Fasting and abstinence helps us recognise the situation in which so many of our brothers and sisters live. They enable us to become more like the Good Samaritan. By freely engaging in acts of self-denial, we make a statement that those in need are not strangers but rather our brothers and sisters. This practice of marking Christ’s death on Friday with fasting and abstinence needs to be rediscovered and encouraged, not only in England and Wales, but throughout the world.