Every day is an opportunity.
Every day is an invitation.
Life, here in the ordinary give and take of living outside
the structure provided by cloister, has a way of swallowing us.
We become
captives of our routines and schedules. Time simply becomes time. Days of the
week simply become days of the week wherein we labor at whatever laboring we
either choose or is laid upon us. We do, after all, have to make ends meet and
provide for the necessities of home and family.
Our modern age captivity to routines and schedules is
nothing new. The predicament has always been around. It does seem that making
ends meet and providing for the necessities of home and family are becoming
more difficult in the environment created by the politics and economics of this
modern age.
One of our great challenges in this modern age concerns developing
and sustaining a devotional discipline befitting of believers in Christ –
something that gives character and dimension to time – and honestly reflects
our personal devotion through a personal allocation of time.
I am reminded of something that the Apostle Paul wrote, “But be careful then how you live, not as
unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are
evil.”[1]
Time, this instrument of measurement created by the Infinite
Creator and dispensed to each of us in indeterminable portions, is a gift
entrusted to each of us. Our little portion of this entrusted gift is all that
we have of it. It is, in this little portion entrusted to us, where we have the
opportunity to either accept or reject the invitation to yield ourselves to the
process of growing in the graces that enrich our lives in this gift of time in
preparation for living in a timeless heaven once our allotted time has expired.
The Apostle James wrote, “Come
now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and
spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ Yet you do not even know
what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears
for a little while and then vanishes.”[2]
A weekly day to focus on self-examination, penitence, and
actions of penance were not part of my Christian understanding before entering
into full-communion in the Catholic Church. The lack of it before entering into
the Catholic Church increases my appreciation of it now. The entire liturgy of the Church is beautiful.
Friday is such a day in the life of the Church – a day to
remember that eventful last day of Christ’s physical life on earth. Together we
remember the cause of Christ’s suffering and death – the sins of all of
humanity, all our collective sins, and I remember my own personal sins (great
and many) as part of the cause of the sufferings of Christ on the Cross. We
remember, too, the great love of Christ for us that motivated him to endure the
Cross for our sake.
Saint Benedict realized the value of self-examination,
penitence, and actions of penance as valuable tools in the monk’s tool chest that draw us deeper into the love of Christ. Lauds,
according to traditional Benedictine practice, begins every Friday with the
penitential 51st Psalm.
The Rosary prayers for Friday (and Tuesday) focus on the
Sorrowful Mysteries – on Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark
14:32-42), the scourging of Jesus (John 19:1), the crowning with thorns (Mark
15:16-20), Jesus carrying the Cross (John 19:12-17), and Christ’s Crucifixion
(Mark 15:22-41).
Friday, in the Catholic Church, is a day of fasting and abstinence
in remembrance of Christ’s suffering for us. Though many no longer adhere to
fasting and abstinence on Friday, nothing has been done by the Church to
abnegate this age-old practice. We are still obligated on Fridays, not only
during Lent but throughout the year, to lessen our food intake and abstain from
eating meat.
While the Church does make allowances for other forms of
penance on Fridays, the most practical and sustainable course, in my opinion,
is to simply fast and abstain on Fridays as a practical and tangible reflective
means of honoring Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.
For the outsider looking in, it would be easy to see this
business of required fasting and abstinence as rigorous imposed legalism. It is
also something that, for cradle Catholics, is easily viewed as something that
we are supposed to do so it is simply done without questioning. I see it, as a
convert from Evangelical Protestantism and as an Oblate of Saint Benedict, in a
different light.
I see it as a response of reflective adoration and love.
“It is love that
impels them to pursue everlasting life; therefore they are eager to take the
narrow road of which the Lord says: Narrow is the road that leads to life.
(Matthew 7:14)”[3]
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