How many of us, like I'm not just those people, like how many of us, like this is tough, this is a tough day. Now think about this.

It's dangerous when we have our fast days and we have like our days of of the standing from meat, particularly during lunch.

Um, that how many people have trouble with it, like how many of us, like I'm not just those people, like how many of us, like this is tough, this is a tough day.

Now think about this. It's standing from meat on Friday's during lunch is not that difficult. Fasting on the two fast days we have, the entire church year is not difficult.

I mean, you know what, the church rules for fasting are what you can eat two small meals and one regular sized meal that it's the quantity of the food you take in does not exceed the two smaller meals combined.

It's the fun. It's not you can eat a lot. Like in fact, I think that what you would be like allowed to eat on a fast day, as at least as Americans, could potentially be more than 99% of the rest of the world eats on a feast day.

So, so here's the interesting thing. It's not difficult, but it's often difficult, right? So it's not difficult to, how many days that we probably go in our lives without eating meat and don't give it a second thought but on Fridays during lunch.

Oh my gosh, it's so tough. Our same thing with Ash Wednesday or good Friday. Like no, just a lighter meal day. It's not even that it's not challenging. It's not painful. Why is it so hard?

Here's why I think it's so hard at times because those other days I am not eating meat because I don't want to eat meat. On those other days, I'm just eating less because I chose to eat less.

On Ash Wednesday, good Friday, on the Fridays during lunch, it's hard to do those things because someone else is telling us we have to. That's the key.

It's only difficult because someone else is telling us we have to do it on that day.

The church comes in and says, this is if you're Catholic, this is what you have to do. There's not an option. You must do this. And that just grates on our ego, right? And grates on our pride because why? Because you and I are the same. We like to do what we like to do. I want to do what I want to do. And here comes the church and says, no, listen, you have to do what I say.

That is tough. So if I was given an escape clause, right? If I was given a way to get out from underneath the authority of the scripture or the authority of sacred tradition, the authority of the church, then I would be, we would probably probably be really tempted to take that escape clause.

Now, into this situation, enter the term conscience, right? Because I'm sure we've all heard the idea of like, you know, you must follow your conscience. You have to obey your conscience. In fact, if you're kind of an informed Catholic, you realize that the Catholic church puts a high value on conscience.

John Henry Cardinal Newman, he's, oh, sorry, blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman. He called conscience the Aboriginal vicar of Christ, which means that the original, the Aboriginal voice of God in the person in the individual.

And so we take that, I bet one phrase that Cardinal Newman gave and we were on with that, right? My gosh, well, if conscience is the voice of God himself, then I must obey my conscience because that's God talking to me.

Now, here's the, here's the, here's the troubling thing or the difficult thing is that Cardinal Newman went on to say a bunch more stuff about, well, forming your conscience about what it is to have a conscience that actually bends in, in is shaped by God himself and by the church. So there's all these other pieces here.

So I can't just pull out the term conscience and say, well, if my conscience tells me that this is okay, then it's okay because that's not how conscience works. And that's also not what conscience is. So what is conscience and what is conscience, not what is not conscience.

What is it? What is it? What is it not? Okay, here, here's what it's not. My conscience, our conscience isn't our personal preference, right? Our conscience isn't our opinion.

Like, so we look at this thing and say, well, I know the church says that that's wrong, but I don't, I don't, I don't see anything wrong with it.

Now this is very important because that happens a lot. Well, the church says that X is wrong, but I don't see anything wrong with it. I don't see why.

Therefore, I can do X. That is not one, that's not following one's own conscience. That is doing what one wants to do. That's just very, very, very clear, very important to understand this.

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