392 Q. How should we keep the holy days of obligation?  A. We should keep the holy days of obligation as we should keep the Sunday.

393 Q. What do you mean by fast-days?  A. By fast-days I mean days on which we are allowed but one full meal.

According to the traditional Catholic method of fasting, one may eat “one full meal” each day with meat included, plus two smaller meatless meals, both of which together do not equal the one full meal.  No eating between meals is allowed, although drinking beverages such as coffee and tea are allowed and are not considered to break the fast. (Milk, juice, and soft drinks are also considered not to break the fast, although they are in fact foods and mitigate the effects of the fast and work contrary to its intent because they satisfy one’s hunger to some extent, since they have food value.) They, therefore, who follow the above regulations obey the Catholic method of fasting.  Today the prescribed days of fast for the whole Church are Ash Wednesday and Good Friday (these are also days of abstinence).  However the Church today says that the meaning of the law of fasting during Lent remains, although the extent of the obligation has been changed.  In other words, Lent remains as a season of penance in the Church, but how it is to be observed is greatly up to the individual, though no one may think himself excused from all penance whatsoever, and those who are in the fasting age group should still practice the Church’s form of fasting, since fasting is a primary and very efficacious form of penance.

Those who, for sufficient reasons, are excused from the obligation of fasting, are not on that account freed from the law of abstinence, for all who have reached their fourteenth birthday are bound to abstain from flesh-meat on days when it is forbidden—­Ash Wednesday and the Fridays of Lent.  The following persons are excused from fasting:  (1) those who are not yet twenty-one or who have begun their sixtieth year (from their 59th birthday onward); (2) those whose infirmity, condition, or occupation renders it impossible or dangerous for them to fast.  If you think you should be excused from fasting or abstaining, state your reasons to your confessor and ask his advice.  On a fast-day, therefore, you have to look both to the quantity and the kind of food, while on a day of abstinence—­as the Fridays in Lent other than Good Friday—­you have to look only to the kind.

394 Q. What do you mean by days of abstinence?  A. By days of abstinence I mean days on which we are forbidden to eat flesh-meat, but are allowed the usual amount of food.

395 Q. Why does the Church command us to fast and abstain?  A. The Church commands us to fast and abstain in order that we may mortify our passions and satisfy for our sins.

“Mortify our passions,” keep our bodies under control, do bodily penance.  Remember it is our bodies that generally lead us into sin; if therefore we punish the body by fasting and mortification, we atone for the sin, and thus God wipes out a part of the temporal punishment due to it.