Dear Father,

I look forward to your writings in The Catholic Times. However, your answer to eating meat on Easter Friday got me a few stern words from Father X at St. Y because I confused Easter Friday with Good Friday and told him that you wrote that I could eat meat on Good Friday. My weak excuse for confusing the two days is I was not raised Catholic and plead ignorance. I do not think I’m alone in confusing Easter Friday with Good Friday and bet you get other feedback on this article.

-Stu


Dear Father,

I would like to comment on an article in the most recent issue of The Catholic Times of March 24th. It would be helpful if it can be clarified that Easter Friday is not Good Friday as no meat should be eaten on Good Friday.

-James


Dear Stu,

Knowing your pastor, I have to admit that I was amused while picturing in my mind the encounter between you and Father X. You have a bit of an excuse for confusing the two days since you recently became a Catholic. You related in your email that you were married to a Catholic lady for over 60 years. I would have thought that the topic of Good Friday might have come up at least once in all that time. Alas.

Apparently, you are not alone in confusing it with Easter Friday, judging from the mail I received on the matter. Perhaps it’s a sign of the broader cultural ignorance. Already 25 years ago, as a college professor, I encountered Catholic students who had attended Catholic schools but did not know basic biblical stories such as the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.

While it’s “water under the bridge” to some extent now that we are in the Easter liturgical season, I feel the need to warn my readers that Good Friday and Easter Friday are not synonymous. Easter Friday is, well, the Friday of Easter Week. Good Friday is the Friday before Easter Sunday.

Good Friday has been kept as a most sacred feast by the Church since the very first Good Friday, when Christ suffered and died on the cross. The Greeks called it the Holy and Great Friday, whereas other cultures called it Sorrowful Friday. The Catholic Encyclopedia says that the origin of the name “Good” is not clear. It makes sense that we call it Good Friday in English because it is the day our Lord gave His life for us and our salvation. The only greater day is Easter Sunday, when He made us sharers in His resurrection from the dead.

Good Friday is the one day of the year that we do not celebrate a Mass per se. There is a unique liturgy composed of the liturgy of the Word including the Passion according to St. John, then chanted solemn intercessions with kneeling, the veneration of the Cross, and Holy Communion. Holy Communion is distributed from that which was consecrated the previous night celebrating the Last Supper since we do not have a Mass this day.

Good Friday is a day of fasting and abstaining from meat as we sorrowfully remember what our sins cost our loving Jesus on that dark day. Easter Friday is the day to feast.

Like the suppression of the Alleluia during Lent, which we more than make up for by the ever-present Alleluias of Easter Week and Easter season, our Lenten fasting and abstention from meat gives way to jubilant banqueting throughout Easter Week.

Of course, you don’t have to eat meat on Easter Friday (I hear the vegans breathing a sigh of relief), but you ought to celebrate with feasting. Why? Because Easter is the solemnity of solemnities, as ranks of liturgical celebrations go. 

So great is the solemnity of Easter that we take an entire eight days to celebrate it. Thus the whole week following Easter Sunday is a solemnity for Christians. Even the gospel passage of each day of Easter week is an unfolding of the one day, Easter Sunday. 

I recently read one Catholic article whose author thinks that Easter feasting actually makes you holier. As a Dominican who is also a foodie, I assure you that eating good food and drinking good drink helps make us more fully human. To not celebrate the gift of our new life in Christ could be a sign of indifference to our Lord’s work of re-creating us.

Finally, the Code of Canon Law stipulates that we abstain from meat on all Fridays of the year “unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday” (#1251). This doesn’t mean, of course, that we must eat meat on Easter Friday, but it does mean that some form of celebration is in order. Why? To show our joy and gratitude for the Lord’s triumph over death and sin and that He will raise us from the dead to share in His Holy Resurrection.