Today is the first Friday of the Easter season, the first Friday since Lent. I always think of it as the closest thing to an anniversary of Good Friday*, of the Death that Died, that we have on the calendar. And so, one of the things that I always do, without any deliberate sense of tradition but as something that just seems to
fit somehow, is
eat meat. In a spirit of feasting, yes--it's the season of the wedding feast of the Lamb--but much more in a spirit of defiance. If
Easter Monday also has this attribute as God's Laughter Day, Easter Friday has to me the additional benefit of flinging off mourning and pain by forgoing the usual self-imposed privations of fasting and abstinence. The kids are thinking pepperoni pizza for dinner tonight. And I am planning
this--the pizza rustica that I never get around to making in time for Easter.
In their calendar, the Eastern churches call the day
Bright Friday. Isn't that lovely?
Friday still retains its character as the day Jesus died for the sin of the world, so acts of penance are still to the fore of my mind. One of the most obvious is to pray the Mercy Chaplet, especially at 3:00. And if you didn't get in on the Divine Mercy novena that began on Good Friday (or lost track of it, as I did), why not make a nine-hour novena today or tomorrow?
What are your thoughts this Friday?
*Which, I know, is itself a sort of anniversary. But I think when anything so life-altering happens, the date exactly to the week after it will have this quality. Often forcibly. Think of a week-old baby, or the first full week of unemployment, of the lifetime of a week since the death of a friend, child or spouse.
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