I have never been good at fasting. However, I want to improve my prayer life and sprituality. I am considering starting a friday fast. What does the church consider a fast for these purposes? Is it simply skipping a meal on Friday or is there more? Thank you.
The traditional Catholic definition of a fast is taking only one full meal during the day, and one or two ‘collations’ which together cannot be more than the full meal. Drinking water is allowed any time.
What a ‘full meal’ is, though, is rather vague–if you had a three course dinner, it would be pretty easy to have a fairly normal breakfast and lunch and still meet the requirements for fasting (as long as you did not eat anything between meals).
So I think you have a fair amount of room to figure out what seems appropriate for you.
I would suggest two factors to take into consideration, though. One is that Friday abstinence from meat is an important penitential practice in the Latin church, and one that is becoming obligatory once again in England and possibly more places. So however you fast on Friday, I would strongly suggest abstaining from meat on Fridays as well.
Secondly, regarding my ‘three course dinner’ scenario: when the saints write about fasting, it is almost always connected with almsgiving: the money you save by eating less should be given to the poor or a worthy charity. So, while there is no hard limit on the amount of food you can eat when fasting (other than that it has to be confined to one full meal and two half-meals), it is sort of implied that you should be spending less money on food on a fast day than on a non-fast day. So simple, low cost food should probably be the focus. So soup and rye bread would be more appropriate fare than lobster and caviar
