THE MEAT OF THE MATTER

In my hometown are the best hamburgers in the world. Hodge’s serves the biggest, tastiest, sloppiest burgers I have every had the pleasure of consuming. Yet we make sure that we only go there occasionally. They are so good we do not want to become too used to them. We want them to remain a treat. So about once every other month when we our bodies are jonesing (sp?) for the delicious taste of a miracle burger we make the trip down to the neighborhood tavern and sink our teeth into a slice of heaven between hamburger buns no matter what the special might be.

They are also big enough to feed a small village in a third world county.

Now suppose you were invited along. I have been telling you about these hamburgers and you were eagerly looking forward to it. But when we got there they said, “Sorry, we are out of meat. But don’t worry, we still have all of the other fixings!” Would you still want one? There is still the fresh bun, the secret sauce, fresh tomatoes, thick onions, spunky pickles, and the cool toothpicks with the curly cues on the top!

Not interested? Neither am I.

But let’s suppose that we went but they were out of lettuce or tomatoes, or onions. Well, that would be perfectly fine. I doubt that I would notice much after the first bite. In fact I know many people who eat their hamburgers sans buns, which one would suppose is an essential element of a hamburger. But without meat there just is no point.

Meat is the center of most of our diets unless you are a vegetarian. Have you ever tried to not eat meat going out to eat? Especially if you do not like fish there is something like two items on every menu that you can eat and most of the time it is a salad please hold the pepperoni. Drill the meat out of our diet it is like taking the meat out of the hamburger – wait – it is taking the meat out of the hamburger.

It’s like taking the cars out of Nascar. There is still the stadium, the crowd, the vending food, the track, the RVs, everything but the cars. Some of the zing is taken out of it.

Okay, now THAT is why the Church asks us to practice a common discipline, a common penance, during lent. NOT because the fish union went to a pope and said that they needed help getting people to eat their slimy offerings. “Please make Catholics not eat meat on Fridays so that we can improve our bottom line!” If that were the case the pope would have said, “Eat fish on Fridays!”

We do not eat fish on Fridays. We abstain from meat. The reason so many Catholics eat fish on Fridays is that when we feast we feast, and when we fast we cheat. “They didn’t say we couldn’t eat fish so let’s eat that!” And Holy Mother Church rolls her eyes and says, “Fine, eat fish instead.”

Except for me. Pass the cheese and bean burritos please.

Here is a decent article on meatless Fridays.