catholicsphere

With today, Ash Wednesday (which is not a holy day of obligation, but it is certainly good to receive ashes — even non-Catholics may receive ashes) being the first day of Lent, I thought it good to provide the following on the regulations surrounding our Lenten observances.

LENTEN REGULATIONS
ABSTINENCE: All persons who have completed their fourteenth year are bound by the Law of Abstinence.

FAST: All adults are bound by the law of fast from their eighteenth year up to the beginning of their sixtieth year.

EXPLANATION: The law of abstinence means that a person is bound to abstain beginning the day after one’s fourteenth birthday. The law of fast means that adults are bound to fast from the day after their seventeenth birthday until the end of the day of their fifty-ninth birthday.

APPLICATION: The law of abstinence forbids the eating of meat and foods prepared with meat or meat by-products. The law of fast allows only one full meal and two lighter meals in the course of a day, and prohibits eating between meals In the United States, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of fast and abstinence. All other Fridays of Lent are days of abstinence.

EXCEPTIONS: Women who are pregnant and persons who are sick are not bound by the law of fast.

UPDATE: Jimmy Akin has even more official stuff over at his blog

[tags]catholic, fasting, Lent, Ash Wednesday, church[/tags]