Table for Twelve

This round table setting for twelve people at the Emerald Garden, a Chinese restaurant along Roxas Boulevard, waits for customers celebrating the Chinese New Year. The lunar calendar heralded the Year of the Rat yesterday with all the merry making at Binondo and other places in Manila even as the catholic faithful are enjoined to abstinence from meat during Fridays of lent.

While the obligation to do penance is left to the individual, each in his own way, the faithful, so that all may be joined together in a certain common practice, days of penance are prescribed by the church. On these days the faithful are in a special manner to devote themselves to prayer, to engage in works of piety and charity, and to deny themselves, by fulfilling their obligations more faithfully.