These days I generally try to observe the Friday abstinence from eating meat as stated in the Precepts of HMC.  On an ordinary Friday, I can get by with a salad for lunch and then either fish, plain pasta, or even just bread and fruit or veg for dinner.

As with remembering my patron Saints, however, I still sometimes slip and forget.  Also, what with the stresses and strains of life around here, sometimes going without meat on a Friday would be prohibitively crippling to my ability to fulfill my responsibilities.

The Church states in its Precepts that fasting (not quite the same thing as Friday abstinence but related to it) to the point of incapacity is actually an uncharitable act and ought not to be done.  The Precepts are a bit vague about whether this also applies to abstinence, but I’m inclined to believe it does.

I was thinking about all this because I sustained my entire round trip yesterday – four hour drive there, three hour meeting, four hour drive back – on one venti latte, one bottle of water and one muffin, and I’m still feeling quite aenemic as a result today.  (I have a very bad habit of not eating when on travel.)  I’m hoping God won’t mind too much that I snarfed down some sausage at brekkers in order to try and get things back to normal.

Thinking of fasting and abstinence got me to pondering again the enormous range of ritual, ceremony and practice of the Church, of which I still know so little.  I do know, however, that all of it ultimately derives from the same goal: to bound all of us – from the Pope to the lowliest of parishioners like myself - together in one Body, namely the Body of Christ.   The converse, of course, is equally true.  Without the purpose of that Communion, all the rest of it is just so much hooey, and perhaps worse.

There is a line from The Fellowship of the Ring that has always caught my attention in this regard, spoken by Galadriel when she invites Frodo and Sam to look into her Mirror in the garden of Lothlorien:

“And you?” she said, turning to Sam.  “For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem also to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy.”

Now LOTR is not a Judeo-Christian book per se, but Tolkien was a very devout Catholic and his Christianity was never very far below the surface.  I have often wondered whether this little matter of Galadriel’s puzzlement over the meaning of “magic” wasn’t a bit of a dig at those who make use of many of the same rituals and practices of the Church (which, insofar as they are designed to bring us in closer contact with the Almighty, could well be described as a kind of magic) for other ends, whether they be tied to a different religious tradition or to some secular pursuit.     

I don’t know.  Perhaps I make too much of it.  However,  I am sometimes irked by the notion that if I say to the average person, “I abstain from meat on Fridays in obeyance to my Church and in honor of my Lord,” they will look at me as if I’d suddenly sprouted antlers.  But if I were to say something like, “I abstain from meat on Fridays because I read about this tribe of the Amazon Basin that does so,” or “I abstain from meat on Fridays because Oprah says it’s recommended in 101 Fengshui Practices for the Soul,” such person is likely to say, “Wow, that’s sooo spiritual.”