Karlo Broussard lays out a couple reasons to not eat meat on Fridays during lent and how it can be a practice that brings us closer to God and builds our self-mastery.
Transcript:
Why do Catholics not eat meat on Fridays during Lent?
Let’s first talk about why not eat meat as an act of penance. Getting back to penance, what we were talking about earlier, right? Well, number one, when it’s kept with a sacrificial spirit, the hunger for the meat is a helpful reminder that we hunger for God. The desire for the meat, and anybody who has practiced abstaining from meat, knows that it’s the hardest thing in the world to not eat meat when you have to not eat meat, but it’s easy to not eat meat when you don’t have to, right? But the precept is imposed upon us to remind us of our hungering for God. Second, the hunger in turn reminds us that only in God can the deepest longings of our human hearts be fulfilled. It’s a reminder of that. So it refocuses the mind on that truth to contemplate it, to meditate on it. And thirdly, it proves to us that we are not slaves, that we are not slaves to our bodily passions, and we are able to govern them. That is, when we abstain and we practice penance, it’s a way by which we can exercise self-mastery and increase in our capacity to exercise control over our bodily passions and desires. So that’s why we engage in penitential acts, one of which is abstaining from meat within the Lenten season. Now, the question is, why in the Lenten season and why not impose it outside of the Lenten season? Well, the church recognizes that there are times in our lives where we need to have a calling and an invitation and even an obligation to focus the mind on truth, certain truths, that we may have a tendency to lose sight of outside of those boundaries of time. So it’s good to have these moments to recollect, to refocus the mind on those truths so that outside of the boundaries, what we focused on within the Lenten season can influence us, create a habitus or a habit, so that we can continuously be reminded of our hunger for God, realize that our deepest longings for happiness can only be found in God, and exercise self-mastery and show that we have control over our bodily passions for the sake of holiness.