Good Friday is the Friday before Easter, and this year, it is celebrated on April 18, 2025. For Christians, it commemorates the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ on the Friday before Resurrection Sunday. It is important to Christians because it was the day Christ paid for their sins or redeemed them of all their sins.
The apostle Paul wrote about this when he said, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins under the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3). This is written of not only in the Old Testament (Is. 53:3-5) but also in the New Testament (1 Pet. 2:24). This is the most important weekend of Christianity from Maundy Thursday, the day on which Christ initiated the Lord’s supper, through Good Friday, the day of Christ’s redemption for sinners, until the resurrection on the third day.
Roman Catholics do not eat the flesh of meat on Good Friday (as well as on Ash Wednesday and the Fridays of Lent). They do eat fish since fish is not considered to be fleshy meat. They also eat cow and chicken products. This form of Penance in the Roman Catholic Church is specifically deemed as Abstinence. It is a supposedly a form of self-denial that causes a Roman Catholic to increase holiness.
But is Abstinence from fleshy meat taught in the Bible?
The Israelites were permitted to eat the fleshy meat of cloven-footed animals. The Leviticus 11:1-3 states, “And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying to them, “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, These are the living things that you may eat among all the animals that are on the earth. Whatever parts the hoof and is cloven-footed and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat.”
In the New Testament, 1 Timothy 4:1-5 states, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”
These and many more verses in the New Testament of the Bible state that if God made it, it is good to eat. Anything we pray over may be eaten if God has made it.
However, we are cautioned regarding brothers and sisters who are weak in the faith not to do things, including eating certain things, that they believe they shouldn’t until they become strong in the faith (Rom. Chapter 14).
Nevertheless, as Christians, we may eat anything God has made as long as we bless it properly. Therefore, the tradition of the Roman Catholics that has become a demand that anybody over 14 years of age must not eat the flesh of meat on Good Friday or for that matter on Ash Wednesday or any of the Fridays of Lent is not biblical and the Roman Catholic Church should not require it of its people.
