Devotion
How to Keep Friday Penance Throughout the Year
Catholic devotion · 6 steps
Every Friday of the year, not only in Lent, is a day of penance in memory of the Lord's Passion: what the Church's law asks, what the bishops of the United States allow in place of abstinence, and how to make it a habit.
6 steps · About 10 minutes
In the apostolic constitution Paenitemini of 1966, Paul VI renewed the Church's ancient discipline of penance and kept Friday as its weekly day, because Friday is the day Christ died. The Code of Canon Law repeats it: all Fridays of the year, and the season of Lent, are penitential days and times in the universal Church, and on Fridays abstinence from meat is to be observed unless a solemnity falls that day; the conference of bishops may substitute other forms of penance. In the United States the bishops did so in 1966: outside Lent, Catholics may replace Friday abstinence with another act of penance or charity, while the bishops asked that abstinence keep first place and hoped it would be freely kept. What no one abolished is the Friday itself. It remains, every week, a day on which a Catholic does something in memory of the Cross.
What you need
- A clear decision about your Friday practice — abstinence from meat, or a named substitute
- A reminder: a note in the calendar, an alarm on Thursday night, or a family custom
- A crucifix to pray before, or the Stations of the Cross when the parish offers them
When to pray it
Every Friday of the year, except a Friday on which a solemnity falls (Christmas, the Sacred Heart, and the others of the calendar), when the penance is lifted. In Lent the discipline is stricter and abstinence from meat is obligatory for all from age fourteen.
Steps
Step 1: Understand that every Friday is penitential
Canon 1250 declares all Fridays of the whole year, together with Lent, to be days and times of penance in the universal Church, and canon 1251 says that abstinence from meat is to be observed on all Fridays unless a solemnity falls on that day. Paenitemini explains why: penance is part of the Gospel, a sharing in the sufferings of Christ, and the Church binds it to Friday so that the week itself keeps the memory of the Passion. The obligation to do penance on Fridays is real and is not confined to Lent; what the bishops of the United States changed in 1966 was the form, allowing another act of penance or charity to replace abstinence outside Lent, not the day.
Tips
- Decide once, then keep it: a Friday practice chosen fresh each week is the one most easily dropped.
- Abstinence from meat is the Church's first preference and the simplest to keep, and it links you to Catholics across the world and across the centuries.
- If you substitute, substitute honestly. Skipping dessert you did not want is not penance; giving up something felt, or doing something costly for someone, is.
- Friday penance is a discipline of love, not a test. Missing a Friday outside Lent is not a sin; it is a Friday to make up for by beginning again the next.