Normally, about 4 hours +/-. But that’s simply the time between breakfast on Sundays (around 8 am) and Mass (11 am start, with communion at about noon). If the church were closer, or Mass earlier, I’d do the required (1hr).
I get home from Mass at about 1 pm and by then I’m pretty darned hungry.
I usually go to Mass in the morning and it’s usually easier to eat breakfast afterwards even if I have enough time to still get the hour. So I put that as overnight fasting.
Usually an hour before Communion itself because if I don’t eat before Sunday Mass (we go to an 8am Mass), I start to feel faint. One time I actually did faint…
I put one hour. Due to a medical condition I cannot go more than three or four hours without eating, so overnight fasting is out of court. I realise my condition exempts me from fasting, but honestly, I don’t feel like having our Lord roiling around with bacon and eggs or cold cereal that might still be hanging around inside. I try to stick to diluted juice before Mass.
Would probably be overnight, since I now go to Mass at 7:45 am most Sundays and usually will not have had breakfast until after that.
I don’t think I’d fast much more than the required hour if I went later (my parish also has 9/10:30/12/1:30/7 plus many more churches pretty close by so lots of options), although on the off time I go to Saturday evening Mass it’d be closer to three or four again because of when I eat.
I’m intrigued by the expression “overnight fasting”. Fasting is a deliberate act but overnight you are simply sleeping, not fasting. Okay you are not eating while sleeping but that is not fasting.
How do you figure? “Fasting” means nothing more than abstaining from food, reason or feasibility notwithstanding. When a doctor tells you to fast 12 hours before a surgery she doesn’t mean to abstain from food for 10 hours before going to bed and then another 2 hours when you wake up before the surgery, she means do not eat any food for 12 hours before the surgery, most of which will be while you’re sleeping, don’t wake up and have any midnight snacks. What’s the name of the first meal of the day in English? break-fast. In Spanish? Des-ayuno (literally “to un-fast”).
My length of Eucharistic fast depends on when Mass is. I very rarely eat breakfast ever, and I typically don’t have my first morsel of food until 1 or 2 PM regardless, and I very rarely eat anything later than 8-9PM, so I’d say 9 times out of 10 I’m inadvertently keeping the old post-midnight fast. Evening masses throughout the week (such as last night’s) depend. I usually shoot for 3 hours but there are times I’ve poorly managed my time, or unforeseen circumstances occur that push my fasting that day closer to the mandatory 1 hour.
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