Fasting is a form of penance that imposes limits on our consumption of food and drink. For centuries, it has been an integral part of Catholic life throughout the year to detach ourselves from worldly desires, make amends for past sins, and increase our desire for God. Unfortunately, the practice of fasting, even during Lent, has decreased substantially.
This was not always the case. Until 1966, the Church prescribed eating only one full meal a day during Lent, along with some food for breakfast and a collation. Days of fasting and abstinence for the universal Church were more numerous: Ash Wednesday, the Fridays and Saturdays of Lent, Ember days and the vigils of certain feasts. With the apostolic constitution “Paenitemini” of Pope St. Paul VI in 1966, the meaning of the law of fasting remained, but the rigor of the obligation was changed. Thus “the law of fasting allows only one full meal a day but does not prohibit taking some food in the morning and evening, while observing approved local custom as far as quantity and quality of food are concerned.”
This reduced the prescribed days of fasting and abstinence for the whole Church to just Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. The document did however recommend that “we, as people of God, make the entire Lenten season a period of special penitential observance… [and] for all other weekdays of Lent, we strongly recommend participation in daily Mass and a self-imposed observance of fasting.”
While the pope’s intention was meant to foster self-motivated behavior rather than one based on prescription, the practice of fasting has fallen by the wayside. Conflating giving up a particular kind of food, drink, or act, as we do now during Lent with fasting has never really been the true meaning of fasting.
