Good Afritada Friday

You're supposed to fast on Good Friday, meaning you're expected to get by on one small meal the entire day and offer up the suffering that is growling, light-headed hunger as your Holy Week sacrifice. If food were one of those things that just by being itself turns our attention away from God, then perhaps I would not have broken the rules today. I've heard some people argue that an empty stomach helps one to hear God better when they're meditating, but I really can't see how that's possible. When you're hungry, all you can think about is that you're hungry. I am reminded of one Good Friday long ago, as an adolescent waaaaay back in the eighties, when my two siblings and I and a cousin from next door spent all day sitting around the dinner table, staring at a large metal pot filled with chicken macaroni salad. We were waiting for 3pm to strike; the hour that Jesus is supposed to have taken his last breath. I can't remember who decreed that we could not eat the macaroni before 3pm (in addition to not taking a bath) or suffer the unknown consequences of disrespecting the suffering Christ, but I do remember that we followed;no questions asked, no protestations bared. Every now and then one of us would lean over the pot, open the lid and inhale deeply. Really deeeeply. The elders exhorted us to go pray quietly somewhere or offer our services at the neighborhood "pabasa" (by that time the use of mikes and speakers to broadcast the manang's voice to the entire barangay was already in popular use), but none of us did anything of the sort. All we could think really think about was raiding that pot. When 3pm rolled around, there was only one thing on our minds. Thank God for macaroni. If fasting didn't move me to spiritual enlightenment then, it surely doesn't now. Personally, I feel more attuned to God's presence when I'm free to eat my three meals a day and thank him for it from the bottom of my heart.