Getting ready for Lent

Every Friday of Lent is a day of Abstinence
Ash Wednesday and Good Friday
are days of Fasting and Abstinence

ABSTINENCE – The Law of Abstinence requires a Catholic 14 years of age until death to abstain from eating meat (beef, chicken, pork) on Fridays in honor of the Passion of Jesus on Good Friday. Also forbidden are soups or gravies made from them. Salt and freshwater species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, and shellfish are permitted, as are animal-derived products such as margarine and gelatin which do not have any meat taste.

FASTING – The Law of Fasting requires a Catholic from the 18th to 59th birthday to reduce the amount of food eaten from normal. The Church defines this as one meal a day, and two smaller meals which if added together would not exceed the main meal in quantity. The fast is broken by eating meals and by drinks which would be considered food.

THOSE WHO ARE EXCUSED from fast and abstinence besides those outside the age limits – Those of unsound mind, the sick, the frail, pregnant or nursing women according to need for meat or nourishment, manual laborers according to need, guests at a meal who cannot excuse themselves without giving great offense or causing enmity, and other situations or moral or physical impossibility to observe the penitential discipline.