MERGED: Ash Wednesday/Lent Fasting Questions

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ask your doctor, you must not fast if it would be dangerous for you.
 
Protein drinks while fasting is not a great idea. Mix it up with a banana. Cannot take my MEDS without food, I have been forewarned by my doctor. A full course meal not required but definitely more than you are eating!

Regarding your heavy arm feeling you should talk to your doctor to be on the safe side.
 
The Ladies Association at our church will be providing a meal of soup on one Friday during Lent. I was surprised when I was told by the ladies that it is acceptable to use meat broth, but not the meat itself. I have always avoided any sort of meat including broth or natural flavoring. Is meat broth acceptable on days of abstinence? 🤷
 
Call your doctor. If you can’t fast from food, then fast from something else.
 
I think just to be safe I’ll wait until after midnight with my meal… had a small one now, just hot coffee (was feeling cold) and some bites of bread… more important to me to not go to bed starved, for the reasons I had mentioned above.
Only a bit more than 3 hours to go till midnight anyway.
Thanks for all the support I hope I am not invalidating my fast by writing about it (as we should do these things in… can’t think of the English word now… hidden.
But Jesus does understand our need for support?
I feel so much better now after something warm to drink 🙂

If the fast really ends at mdnight, then I would probably have been ok even to eat a full meal now and eat whatever I like again at midngiht, but then that would seem overdoing it… to me… so I think I’ll wait now. So I had either only two small meals today, or two small meals and a communion that I considered nourishing me a tiny bit physically… which in any case fulfills the fast; and since 1) I am ALMOST sure that the fats ends at midnight and 2) I did fast the whole day without even one real meal and 3) it might affect my health to not eat something before I go to sleep… I will allow myself to have something bigger before I go to sleep, but after midnight.
I hope that is ok.
 
chefmomster2 said:
The Ladies Association at our church will be providing a meal of soup on one Friday during Lent. I was surprised when I was told by the ladies that it is acceptable to use meat broth, but not the meat itself. I have always avoided any sort of meat including broth or natural flavoring. Is meat broth acceptable on days of abstinence? 🤷
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I think I read something like that before too…
As a vegetarian abstinence is not hard for me, but fasting is ;//////
 
Question. My brother received his ash from his school, but the school (it’s a Catholic School) never had Mass. I’m assuming the the priest blessed this during his morning masses, but it’s just alarming for me for a Catholic school didn’t not hold a Mass for the ashes. The question now is, is it ok to receive the ashes without attending the Mass? My brother will be joining me later to attend the Mass with me.
 
I remember as a Catholic school child receiving ashes in our classroom. Father came in, we prayed together and then we walked up to receive the ashes. I know of no requirement that ashes be given at a mass. I have frequently received them at a prayer service. Likewise, Ash Wednesday is not a holy day of obligation.
 
lakotak said:
I am of an age where I am not required to fast, but I am going to anyway.
However, I am diabetic, diet controlled.

I would like to ask any of you who fall into my category what is a good way to fast.

I was thinking of maybe an egg sandwich for breakfast, something small, like a small amount of fruit for lunch, a reasonable snack for afternoon and a regular meatless meal for dinner.

Does this sound like too much. I have kinda always been confused with what really constitutes fasting.

Any suggestions or help would be most appreciated.
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I think you should talk to your doctor before you modify your diet.
 
chefmomster2 said:
The Ladies Association at our church will be providing a meal of soup on one Friday during Lent. I was surprised when I was told by the ladies that it is acceptable to use meat broth, but not the meat itself. I have always avoided any sort of meat including broth or natural flavoring. Is meat broth acceptable on days of abstinence? 🤷
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Yes, it is.
 
kategarbino said:
Question. My brother received his ash from his school, but the school (it’s a Catholic School) never had Mass. I’m assuming the the priest blessed this during his morning masses, but it’s just alarming for me for a Catholic school didn’t not hold a Mass for the ashes. The question now is, is it ok to receive the ashes without attending the Mass? My brother will be joining me later to attend the Mass with me.
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Ash Wednesday is not a day of obligation.
 
DarkLight said:
For those of us who are unable to fast - what are some things you do to make fast days special?
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From this morning’s LOTH: Isaiah:
“This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed,
breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own.”

From Isaiah 58
 
Where I am Wednesday is now over and I thank everyone who has helped me and sorry for being a bit tedious…
 
angell1 said:
shouldn’t we have stricter fasting requirements? there are only 2 official days of fasting, the rest is up to us i guess whether we want to do it or not

how come we don’t have something like muslims do during ramadan?
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REad Chapter 58 of Isaiah (which was in the LOTH this morning).

You are missing the point, almost entirely.
 
Dnice said:
I was away from the Catholic Church for a long time and this is my first Lenten season since being back. I guess when I was younger, I didn’t really pay attention to the fasting rules during Lent.

Can someone help me out and explain to me what you eat during a fast? I know the rules are only 1 full meal but what else do you eat during the day and how often? If for example, I usually have a sandwhich, chips and an iced green tea for lunch, if I didn’t have the chips and the tea, would just the sandwhich be considered a meal? Should I do half a sandwich (with no chips and tea)?

Thanks in advance for your help.
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If you eat 1800 calories in a day, divided into three equal meals, then you could eat less than 1200 calories, such as 300 + 600 + 299.
 
Well apparently God decided what I was doing for me! Managed to entirely ignore the “fasting” rules due to a rather persistent stomach bug. Problem solved? 😃
 
So I understand that today we can only eat one full me or two smaller meals, but are there rules about what those include? For the day, all I have available are snack foods, like chex mix. Could I make that my meal?
 
DarkLight said:
The hard part for me is as much, how little I have to begin with often. I don’t own a car or a tv. I don’t eat much or expensively because I can’t afford it - meals are “what’s around and cheap”. I don’t smoke, and I don’t drink often. I can’t really give to charity because I have little money and more debt. I haven’t eaten meat in years. At this point it just seems like there’s nothing in my life that I could really do without very easily. Which is honestly sort of depressing when I think about something like Lent…
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I’m sorry you have been sick, I hope you get well soon.

In the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Paul VI, that changed fast and abstinence norms, are given the reasons for the change, which are helpful to understand. Asceticism and charity are preferred where there is more economic well-being, and promotion of social justice, and prayer elsewhere.
  • Therefore, where economic well-being is greater, so much more will the witness of asceticism have to be given in order that the sons of the Church may not be involved in the spirit of the “world,”(61) and at the same time the **witness of charity **will have to be given to the brethren who suffer poverty and hunger beyond any barrier of nation or continent.(62)
  • On the other hand, in countries where the standard of living is lower, it will be more pleasing to God the Father and more useful to the members of the Body of Christ if Christians—while they seek in every way to ** promote better social justic**e—offer their suffering in prayer to the Lord in close union with the Cross of Christ.
  • Therefore, the Church, while preserving—where it can be more readily observed—the custom (observed for many centuries with canonical norms) of practicing penitence also through abstinence from meat and fasting, intends to ratify with its prescriptions other forms of penitence as well, provided that it seems opportune to episcopal conferences to replace the observance of fast and abstinence with exercises of prayer and works of charity.
 
C794 said:
So I understand that today we can only eat one full me or two smaller meals, but are there rules about what those include? For the day, all I have available are snack foods, like chex mix. Could I make that my meal?
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Yes.
 
C794 said:
So I understand that today we can only eat one full me or two smaller meals, but are there rules about what those include? For the day, all I have available are snack foods, like chex mix. Could I make that my meal?
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No meats, but you can also avoid other, especially the most enjoyable, foods.
  • Canon 1251 Abstinence from eating meat or another food according to the prescriptions of the conference of bishops is to be observed on Fridays throughout the year unless they are solemnities; abstinence and fast are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and on the Friday of the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
  • Canon 1252 All persons who have completed their fourteenth year are bound by the law of abstinence; all adults are bound by the law of fast up to the beginning of their sixtieth year. Nevertheless, pastors and parents are to see to it that minors who are not bound by the law of fast and abstinence are educated in an authentic sense of penance.
For the USA.USCCB **

Canon 1253 - Observance of Fast and Abstinence **
Complementary Norm: Norms II and IV of Paenitemini (February 17, 1966) are almost identical to the canons cited. The November 18, 1966 norms of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on penitential observance for the Liturgical Year continue in force since they are law and are not contrary to the Code (canon 6).

Approved: Administrative Committee, September 1983

Promulgated: Memorandum to All Bishops, October 21, 1983

Amended: “… the age of fasting is from the completion of the twenty-first year to the beginning of the sixtieth” (Paenitemini, norm IV) is amended to read “‘… the age of fasting is from the completion of the eighteenth year to the beginning of the sixtieth’ in accord with canon 97.”

Promulgated: Memorandum to All Diocesan Bishops, February 29, 1984

(See On Penance and Abstinence, Pastoral Statement of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, November 18, 1966)

The Pastoral Statement from 1966 has:
  1. Wherefore, we ask, urgently and prayerfully, that we, as people of God, make of the entire Lenten Season a period of special penitential observance. Following the instructions of the Holy See, we declare that the obligation both to fast and to abstain from meat, an obligation observed under a more strict formality by our fathers in the faith, still binds on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. No Catholic Christian will lightly excuse himself from so hallowed an obligation on the Wednesday which solemnly opens the Lenten season and on that Friday called “Good” because on that day Christ suffered in the flesh and died for our sins
  2. In keeping with the letter and spirit of Pope Paul’s Constitution Poenitemini, we preserved for our dioceses the tradition of abstinence from meat on each of the Fridays of Lent, confident that no Catholic Christian will lightly hold himself excused from this penitential practice.
  3. Accordingly, since the spirit of penance primarily suggests that we discipline ourselves in that which we enjoy most, to many in our day abstinence from meat no longer implies penance, while renunciation of other things would be more penitential.
 
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