The U.S. bishops "did not completely eliminate the legal obligation to do penance on Fridays. They restricted the legal obligation to certain Fridays of the year [Lent] and replaced it with an exhortation to penance on the remaining Fridays."
(Go here for more.)
That is a wonderfully needed clarification! So, there is no "binding" on this issue (thus no sin), outside of the Lenten season. (But I'm still sticking to my plan.)
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So, a few posts ago, we talked about discipline vs. doctrine.
(Note to new readers: That is a very important post, especially for Catholics; please go there immediately!)
In the comments, Cathy was good enough to remind us that, even though we are no longer bound to abstain from meat on Fridays (outside of the Lenten season), we are still [exhorted] to perform some type of Friday mortification in remembrance of Christ's Passion and death.
I will admit that for many years, I have struggled with implementing this [exhortation]. Often, I don't remember it at all.
But, starting tomorrow, those days are gone! I am now committed to a weekly act of self-denial and sacrifice that will impress the heck out of
Are you ready??
I am going to abstain from blogging and computers on Fridays! All blogs, all blogging, all email, all web surfing, all of it! Every Friday. Every single Friday from this day forth!
Do you know what that is going to do to me?!
EITHER....
I will be made so holy by this offering that I will levitate out of my bedroom window and into the sky with a luminous glow such that it will prompt the bishop to open the cause for my canonization even before I am dead.
OR......
I will be like a junkie denied a fix, pacing the floors, walking in circles, confused, with a dazed look in my eyes, pulling myself towards and then away from my drug of choice, perhaps needing to be locked up for my own protection.
But, one way or another, I will do it!
The blogs will still be there when I get back, right? And, email can wait, can't it? If there is an emergency, folks can call me on the phone, yes? Nothing truly catastrophic will happen, will it?
Do you know what will motivate me when I am tempted to break my promise and take back my offering to God? I will look to my crucifix and recall a Man who once was tortured, nailed, bled and died for love of pitiful me. And so if I can't give up one day of a creature comfort for Him, well then, I don't deserve the name Christian.
Pray for me! :)
