THE GLOBE
PO BOX 5079 (51102)
1825 JACKSON ST.
SIOUX CITY, IA (51105)
712.255.2550
800.352.9035
WWW.CATHOLICGLOBE.ORG

Spirituality in Friday fish dinners

By Father Dennis Meinen
View from the scooter

Somebody has said there are only two kinds of people in the world. There are those who wake up in the morning and say, "Good morning, Lord," and there are those who wake up in the morning and say, "Good Lord, it's morning."

This past Lenten season I really looked forward to Fridays, not only because of the solemn Liturgical activities (Mass, Holy hour for vocations, Stations of the Cross,) but also a fish dinner delivery, courtesy of the Men's Club. Which parish? (Hint: The 3rd Joyful Mystery) In the words of Lawrence Welk, "Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!" Each Friday I had the pleasant menu of fish, salad and dessert, delivered by one or two angels, all within arm’s reach. And on one Friday I even had baked goods from the youth group!

I had to look up again why Catholics eat fish during Lent. Abstinence.

All Catholics who are fourteen and older are obliged to abstain from meat, and soups and gravy made from meat, on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and the Fridays of Lent.
 
Why do Catholics Eat Fish on Fridays?
In the first century, Jews fasted on Mondays and Thursdays. The original Christians were all Jewish and were used to the fasting as a spiritual discipline. They moved the fast days to Wednesdays and Fridays, because Judas engineered Jesus’ arrest on a Wednesday and Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Most often that fast took the form of avoiding meat in the diet. In those days, meat was a luxury food. You either had to buy it in a market or you had to own enough land to keep cattle. On the other hand, anyone could grow vegetables or forage for them, and anyone could catch a fish in a lake or a stream. You could eat without money if you were poor. So meat was rich people's food and fish was poor people's food. That is why the most common form of fasting was to omit meat and eat fish.

 What really saved me was the instruction that “ One full meal is allowed on the days of fast.” I wonder if the Lord noticed that my scooter tires seemed a little soft….

I remember that a holy Benedictine sister once told me they — at least the “old school” ones — are bound by their vow of poverty to waste nothing, even unto making a little pile of their bread crumbs and such from each meal and consuming it. So, for them every crumb does count…especially in Lent, when the fasting is (again, for “old school” Benedictines and more traditionally-minded monastics) fairly regimented .
 Perhaps eating every bit of my Friday fish dinners was an honest attempt to imitate the Benedictine vow of poverty. (That’s my story…)

Or we could use this man’s three rules: “Three rules: I do not eat too much; I do not worry too much; and, if I do my best, I believe that what happens,  happens for the best.” – Henry Ford