Appropriate Substitute Penance On Fridays

[zunshynn]

What is an appropriate substitute penance in place of not eating meat on Fridays throughout the year?

Someone told me once that a Chaplet or a Rosary is sufficient but that seems rather small. And I feel like that's something I SHOULD do anyway, every day. But I often don't... so it seems like it wouldn't work as a penance.

[cappie]

Can. 1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

Can. 1253 The Episcopal Conference can determine more particular ways in which fasting and abstinence are to be observed. In place of abstinence or fasting it can substitute, in whole or in part, other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety.

This seems very straightforward. The 1983 Code continues the law that Friday penance is required of the faithful. Canon 1251 does list abstinence from meat as the penance to be observed OR some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference. Canon 1253 goes still further to allow the Episcopal Conference to substitute, in whole or in part, other forms of penance.

"On Penance and Abstinence" issued by the NCCB on 18 Nov 1966.

Among the works of voluntary self-denial and personal penance which we especially commend to our people for the future observance of Friday, even though we hereby terminate the traditional law of abstinence as binging under pain of sin, as the sole prescribed means of observing Friday, we give first place to abstinence from flesh meat. We do so in the hope that the Catholic community will ordinarily continue to abstain from meat by free choice as formerly we did in obedience to Church law.

Our expectation is based on the following considerations:
a. We shall thus freely and out of love for Christ Crucified show our solidarity with the generations of believers to whom this practice frequently became, expecially in times of persecution and of great poverty, no mean evidence of fidelity in Christ and his Church.
b. We shall thus also remind ourselves that as Christians, although immersed in the world and sharing its life, we must preserve a saving and necessary difference from the spirit of the world. Our deliberate, personal abstinence from meat, more especially because no longer required by law, will be an outward sign of inward spiritual values that we cherish.

[url="http://www.nccbuscc.org/dpp/penitential.htm"]http://www.nccbuscc.org/dpp/penitential.htm[/url]