First Fridays in Kansas City are a pretty big event.

Did you read that first sentence?

It means totally different things to different people.

Until a handful of months ago, I heard "First Fridays" and instantly thought of the street parties and art galleries in Kansas City's Crossroads District. In fact, if you put "First Friday" in the Google, you'll see it's a regular party on the first Friday of each month in a variety of cities for a number of different events from a block party in Las Vegas to a mixer for African American Professionals in San Francisco.

So when I first heard "First Friday" in a Catholic sense, I was understandably confused.

It has to do with a Catholic sense of the calendar, each day is set aside for a type of commemoration. It's commonly known that each day of the calendar is set aside as a saint's feast day, but certain months are set aside to recognize different commemorations--as are certain days of the week. Think of it like this: every Sunday is a "miniature Easter", Catholics go to Mass to celebrate the risen Jesus in the Mass. Likewise, Fridays are "miniature Good Fridays" dedicated to Christ's Passion and his Sacred Heart. Months work the same way; in the secular world, March is National Frozen Food Month, but in a the Church's realm, March is also dedicated to St. Joseph, Jesus' Earthly father.

You can pick which one is more important, or incorporate both commemorations into your St. Joseph's Table. Frozen cookie dough, anyone?

First Fridays are a little different though. As the devotion to Jesus's Sacred Heart, they are a call for Catholics to go to Mass on that day in devotion.

I remember a story told to me by a priest about going to Catholic School in the '50's. Back then, he said that there was a three-hour fast before going to Mass, which basically meant that you didn't have any breakfast before you went to church. There's a variety of reasons for this act that Canon Lawyer Ed Peters discusses on his blog and elsewhere, but the short answer is that when you receive Communion, you should be hungry for the Lord. Today, the Church only requires a one-hour fast before receiving communion (not one-hour before Mass, which practically means don't eat during church) and some old-timers talk about when it was a 12-hour fast (anyone know when it changed to the 3-hour fast?), which meant you had to have watch the time of dinner on Saturday night. So you first meal in the morning is when you would break the fast, or... eat breakfast. But I digress.

This priest was talking about how all the Catholic school children would go to Mass before school on the first Friday of each month (as was the custom), and of course, wouldn't have eaten anything before they left for school that morning. So after Mass, the parish and school would have milk and doughnuts in the church basement. He remembered really looking forward to each first Friday because it meant that he could get sugared-up before going to class. The priest would join them too, all the nuns and teachers were easy-going on those days, they really had fun as they kicked off each month at church and school.

It's a cute story about how people become attached to their church and how when people put God first in their lives, life is sweet. For a moment, this priest telling me the story was smiling, leaning back in his chair with his hands folded on top of his belly, lost in a little corner of time.

This was a practice that was totally lost on me. In Catholic school, we went to Mass once a week. But we would have easily fulfilled the 1-hour fast by the time lined up at the front of class in our single-file lines to march over to church; milk and doughnuts after Mass were pretty irrelevant at that point. And we didn't discuss the Sacred Heart of Jesus at all, much less taking the first Friday of each month in commemoration. I don't know why, except the charitable presumption that religion teachers all had other topics to talk about and there's only so much time in a school day.

I was 28 years old in my lifelong Catholicity before I'd ever heard of a church first Friday or given any thought to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Strictly speaking, a First Friday commitment is part of a novena to the Sacred Heart. A novena is a set of nine of something. Commonly, a novena would be going to Mass or saying a rosary for nine consecutive days or once a week for nine consecutive weeks or--as in first Friday--once a month for nine consecutive months. The idea comes from the Bible; after Jesus ascended to heaven, he instructed his disciples to devote themselves to constant prayer. The apostles, Mary and some other followers locked themselves in the upper room and prayed together for nine days ending in Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon them and compelled them to being their Christian ministry to the world. Yet despite its part in a nine-month set, I'd venture a guess that most people that participate in First Friday Mass do it every month, not just 9 out of 12 in a year. I don't specifically keep the First Friday novena myself--but maybe I'll start this month.

June is the month that the Church dedicates to the Sacred Heart of Jesus--so I guess I probably have started last month. Truth be told--I probably actually did go to Mass on the first Friday of June, but I didn't do it as a Sacred Heart devotional, I just went because I go to Mass fairly often. I think I'll start it here on Friday. It sounds like a nice way to start a nice 3-day weekend.

You know, it would be hard for me to grasp this connection to the Sacred Heart. I guess it's because I don't really understand what people are going for; but since I've never tried, there's no surprise I don't understand the connection. I'm looking for the end result before I've made the first step.

Yet intellectually, what does it mean to have a devotion to the Sacred Heart? From FishEaters:

The heart has always been seen as the "center" or essence a person ("the heart of the matter," "you are my heart," "take it to heart," etc.) and the wellspring of our emotional lives and love ("you break my heart," "my heart sings," etc.) Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is devotion to Jesus Christ Himself, but in the particular ways of meditating on his interior life and on His threefold love -- His divine love, His burning love that fed His human will, and His sensible love that affects His interior life.

Later:

Devotion to the Sacred Heart has two elements: consecration and reparation:

We consecrate ourselves to the Sacred Heart by acknowledging Him as Creator and Redeemer and as having full rights over us as King of Kings, by repenting, and by resolving to serve Him.

We make reparations for the indifference and ingratitude with which He is treated and for leaving Him abandoned by humanity.

In art, the Sacred Heart is often depicted as a heart, burning with Love and tortured by thorns. Sometimes you'll see it just as a heart by itself, sometimes you'll see it in a statue or image of Jesus with his heart on his chest.

A woman once told me told me a story: at one point of her life, her marriage was falling apart, her kids were turning away from her, she was nearly bankrupt and sick, she found a small picture of Jesus and put it on her desk. In those moments where she was too weak from crying to pray, she was able to turn to Jesus and sob, knowing that with His love, she could make it another day. She was able to go to the Sacred Heart just as her own heart was breaking.

Sometimes we devote ourselves to God. Sometimes he devotes Himself to us.

Hey, I like art galleries and wine too. And in that respect, I like First Fridays. But if you're ever around some Catholic nerd (like me) and he mentions that he's going to First Friday, he might not mean that he's going down to cruise the art galleries and drink wine on a warm summer night (of course, he might mean that exact thing). Or maybe he's got something else on his mind?

I'm sure it's not exactly what they're teaching in medical school these days, but I'm going to start thinking of the Heart when I think of doughnuts.

That's my kind of Catholicism!