The Lent Season

Lent is a forty-day period of preparation for Easter. It begins on Ash Wednesday. We skip Sundays when we count the forty days, because Sundays commemorate the Resurrection. In the Roman Catholic Church, Lent officially ends at sundown on Holy Thursday with the beginning of the mass of the Lord’s Supper. Lent originated in the very earliest days of the Church as a preparatory time for Easter when converts were instructed in the faith and prepared for baptism, and the faithful deepened their commitment to Christ. By observing the forty days of Lent, the individual Christian imitates Jesus’ withdrawal into the wilderness for forty days.

Fast and Abstinence Lenten Regulations
All Catholics 14 years of age or older are asked to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and all the Fridays of Lent. Catholics between the ages of 14 and 59 are also to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday unless one's work or health make it inadvisable. One full meatless meal is allowed on the days of fast. Two other meatless meals, sufficient to maintain strength, are allowed. Together the two meals should not exceed the full meal. Drinking of ordinary liquids does not break the fast.

"Like Moses, who fasted before receiving the tablets of the Law, and Elijah's fast before meeting the Lord on Mount Horeb, Jesus, too, through prayer and fasting, prepared Himself for the mission that lay before Him, marked at the start by a serious battle with the tempter. . . Such was the case with Ezra who, in preparation for the journey from exile back to the Promised Land, calls upon the assembled people to fast so that 'we might humble ourselves before our God.'” (Pope Benedict XVI)