Friday Penance

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giuseppe96

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Can anyone tell me what other forms of Penance we may perform on Friday rather than fasting or abstinence. I only recently found out that we are still required to perform penance on Fridays even outside of Lent, so it annoys my friends to no end that I won’t eat meat on Fridays any day of the year anymore.
 
One of the messages of Our Lady at Fatima was the faithful fulfillment of one’s duties is the penance of today. Pope Saint John Paul II, said the message of Fatima is more relevant now than it was then.

Wherefore, the study of the treatment of the 10 commandments in various catechisms - is thereby the study of penance. For the commandments indicate the duties by the light they give on natural law (cf. CCC 1956, 1955) - which innately binds all persons to duty.

This does not rule out all the various penances the catechism lists in her treatment of the Sacrament of Penance.
 
Visit the sick, the prisoners in jail.
I try to pray the chaplet of the seven sorrows.
Visit Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
Do volunteer work.
Be extra nice to someone who you dislike.
 
The Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy do a good job.
But self-sacrifice, like no tv if you particularly enjoy it, no sweet beverages, and the like can serve as well. Each to his own abilities. Sometimes simply being patient with a difficult person please Our Lord. It all comes down to gratitude for HIS sacrifice.
By my own opinion, I don’t do “extra” prayer as a self-imposed penance. I enjoy praying, It’s not a burden or sacrifice to me. So I do other things. What you do may be totally different. But I do find joy in prayers.
peace
 
See the Catechism: The Many Forms of Penance in Christian Life

See also the “Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence” issued by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Paragraph 27 addresses your question:
  1. It would bring great glory to God and good to souls if Fridays found our people doing volunteer work in hospitals, visiting the sick, serving the needs of the aged and the lonely, instructing the young in the Faith, participating as Christians in community affairs, and meeting our obligations to our families, our friends,our neighbors, and our community, including our parishes, with a special zeal born of the desire to add the merit of penance to the other virtues exercised in good works born of living faith.
I also have to comment on your statement: …it annoys my friends to no end that I won’t eat meat on Fridays any day of the year anymore.

How is it that your friends even know that you are abstaining from meat?

I don’t eat meat on Fridays and I seriously doubt that my friends or co-workers have any idea about my practice. Mostly because I don’t go around ANNOUNCING that I am abstaining from meat.

I normally bring a salad to work for my lunch. On other days it may include some chicken or other meat. On Fridays it’s either all vegetables or may include some seafood. If anyone notices it’s only that “she’s having a salad for lunch again.”

If I go out to dinner on a Friday, someone else may order a steak and my comment is “oh, the salmon sounds awfully good.” Well yes, the salmon does sound good so why shouldn’t I choose it? It’s no big deal.

People only notice your diet if you call attention to it. So don’t.
 
SuscipeMeDomine said:
People only notice your diet if you call attention to it. So don’t.
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This is true. There are so many people these days who are vegetarian by choice, or have meatless days either for their health or because that’s what they like to eat. Many restaurants that serve meat have fish and/or vegetarian options because there are so many people who don’t want meat just as a matter of diet. So unless you make a big announcement about abstaining from meat due to religion, people just assume it’s either your preference to have the salad or a medical/ health choice.

I have many days, Fridays and non-Fridays, where I don’t happen to eat meat because I’d rather have a salad or a peanut butter sandwich, so honestly, going without meat for a day or even a few days is not much of a penance for me. I observe the abstinence days in Lent but for real penance I have to do something else.
 
SuscipeMeDomine said:
See the Catechism: The Many Forms of Penance in Christian Life

See also the “Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence” issued by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Paragraph 27 addresses your question:
  1. It would bring great glory to God and good to souls if Fridays found our people doing volunteer work in hospitals, visiting the sick, serving the needs of the aged and the lonely, instructing the young in the Faith, participating as Christians in community affairs, and meeting our obligations to our families, our friends,our neighbors, and our community, including our parishes, with a special zeal born of the desire to add the merit of penance to the other virtues exercised in good works born of living faith.
Sorry, I wasn’t being very clear. I don’t mean that I blab it to them all the time. Usually I go out with friends on Friday, so they question why I still won’t eat meat even though Lent is over. I meant to say it baffles my friends, I wouldn’t really say it annoys them. Sorry about that.

I also have to comment on your statement: …it annoys my friends to no end that I won’t eat meat on Fridays any day of the year anymore.

How is it that your friends even know that you are abstaining from meat?

I don’t eat meat on Fridays and I seriously doubt that my friends or co-workers have any idea about my practice. Mostly because I don’t go around ANNOUNCING that I am abstaining from meat.

I normally bring a salad to work for my lunch. On other days it may include some chicken or other meat. On Fridays it’s either all vegetables or may include some seafood. If anyone notices it’s only that “she’s having a salad for lunch again.”

If I go out to dinner on a Friday, someone else may order a steak and my comment is “oh, the salmon sounds awfully good.” Well yes, the salmon does sound good so why shouldn’t I choose it? It’s no big deal.

People only notice your diet if you call attention to it. So don’t.
Click to expand...
 
SuscipeMeDomine said:
See the Catechism: The Many Forms of Penance in Christian Life

See also the “Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence” issued by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Paragraph 27 addresses your question:
  1. It would bring great glory to God and good to souls if Fridays found our people doing volunteer work in hospitals, visiting the sick, serving the needs of the aged and the lonely, instructing the young in the Faith, participating as Christians in community affairs, and meeting our obligations to our families, our friends,our neighbors, and our community, including our parishes, with a special zeal born of the desire to add the merit of penance to the other virtues exercised in good works born of living faith.
I also have to comment on your statement: …it annoys my friends to no end that I won’t eat meat on Fridays any day of the year anymore.

How is it that your friends even know that you are abstaining from meat?

I don’t eat meat on Fridays and I seriously doubt that my friends or co-workers have any idea about my practice. Mostly because I don’t go around ANNOUNCING that I am abstaining from meat.

I normally bring a salad to work for my lunch. On other days it may include some chicken or other meat. On Fridays it’s either all vegetables or may include some seafood. If anyone notices it’s only that “she’s having a salad for lunch again.”

If I go out to dinner on a Friday, someone else may order a steak and my comment is “oh, the salmon sounds awfully good.” Well yes, the salmon does sound good so why shouldn’t I choose it? It’s no big deal.

People only notice your diet if you call attention to it. So don’t.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I wasn’t being very clear. I don’t mean that I blab it to them all the time. Usually I go out with friends on Friday, so they question why I still won’t eat meat even though Lent is over. I meant to say it baffles my friends, I wouldn’t really say it annoys them. Sorry about that.
 
giuseppe96 said:
Sorry, I wasn’t being very clear. I don’t mean that I blab it to them all the time. Usually I go out with friends on Friday, so they question why I still won’t eat meat even though Lent is over. I meant to say it baffles my friends, I wouldn’t really say it annoys them. Sorry about that.
Click to expand...
And this makes you want to switch the penance that you do? :confused:
 
giuseppe96 said:
Can anyone tell me what other forms of Penance we may perform on Friday rather than fasting or abstinence. I only recently found out that we are still required to perform penance on Fridays even outside of Lent, so it annoys my friends to no end that I won’t eat meat on Fridays any day of the year anymore.
Click to expand...
If you live in the USA then outside Lent you are NOT required to abstain from eating meat on Fridays. You may perform any form of penance. For example, pray the Rosary.
 
pianistclare said:
By my own opinion, I don’t do “extra” prayer as a self-imposed penance. I enjoy praying, It’s not a burden or sacrifice to me. So I do other things. What you do may be totally different. But I do find joy in prayers.
peace
Click to expand...
Great.

And for me the “extra” prayer is a sacrifice as it takes time away from something I might be doing for recreation.
 
I think many people enjoy praying to some degree. They might also enjoy the other service works mentioned above in the thread, like visiting the elderly, instructing children and volunteering in hospitals, etc. That doesn’t mean the prayers or works can’t also have penitential value if done in the right spirit.

Penance can be a way to challenge yourself to serve or make reparation in new ways. But it doesn’t always have to be a hardship or dislikable, or to put it another way, if you want that type of penance, you could just make a special effort to offer up all of the annoyance that happen to you in a given day, because there’s going to be a bunch, from having to do housework or work tasks that you don’t like, to having a frustrating commute, or some type of pain from an illness, or store clerks being rude, or friends disagreeing with you over something, etc.

To each his own of course…I think the idea is to offer lots of options so that everybody can find their own best way to “observe” Fridays.
 
giuseppe96 said:
Can anyone tell me what other forms of Penance we may perform on Friday rather than fasting or abstinence. I only recently found out that we are still required to perform penance on Fridays even outside of Lent, so it annoys my friends to no end that I won’t eat meat on Fridays any day of the year anymore.
Click to expand...
Humility seems to demand to FAST as you now know is the rule.

REAL [sacrificial] works of charity might be substituted with a lesser merit to you than fasting

God Bless
 
I vacuum the house and clean the bathrooms. Both jobs I hate, but help my wife with the household workload as she hates those jobs as well.
 
giuseppe96 said:
I only recently found out that we are still required to perform penance on Fridays even outside of Lent,
Click to expand...
Penance should be done every day. CCC 2041 says that the Precepts of the Church are the “very necessary minimum”. We should be growing beyond the minimum.
 
The guidance by the Bishops Conferences states that Christ died for our Salvation on Friday and by some sort of penance we should be reminding ourselves of that pivotal element of our faith every single week.

"For this reason we urge all to prepare for that weekly Easter that comes with each Sunday by freely making of every Friday a day of self-denial and mortification in prayerful remembrance of the passion of Jesus Christ.

Among the works of voluntary self-denial and personal penance which we especially commend to our people for the future observance of Friday, even though we hereby terminate the traditional law of abstinence binding under pain of sin, as the sole prescribed means of observing Friday, we give first place to abstinence from flesh meat. We do so in the hope that the Catholic community will ordinarily continue to abstain from meat by free choice as formerly we did in obedience to Church law."

I also do not like the idea of praying more (rosaries, etc) as a good form of ‘penance’ any more than speaking to another loved one is a penance. I think it particularly sends a negative message to youngsters. The manual labor of helping your spouse clean the house sounds to me like the sort of option we could choose along with Corporal Works of Mercy. The church’s intent was to regularly perform an act, not heroic mind you, but of a nature that would remind us that it is Friday and to keep Our Lord’s passion in mind.

Heck, the easiest thing IMHO to comply with this obligation is to abstain from meat, unless you are a vegetarian. Cant imaging why one would twist oneself into a pretzel coming up with ways to comply with these (2) Canons when pushing the steak and chops aside is uber-easy. Nobody has ever questioned me about my choice of fish. If they link my choice to my Catholicism and ask if that rule wasn’t trashed years ago, I will usually say “old habits die hard”.
 
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