Verified answer

Yes, Lent is the season of fasting 40 days and night as Jesus did in the desert before He began his ministry to call the people to Himself and show them the Way to the New Covenant.

Most are required to fast between the ages of 14 and 60 after that it is optional according to your health not every one fasts the same way but not to eat at all is only for mystics and those with great stamina.

Yes, they have mandatory fasting periods. There are several differences compared to Muslim fasting during Ramadan. Here are the Catholic fasting regulations for the U.S. (there are different regulations in some nations, but I believe most nations are very similar or identical to this)

http://www.americancatholic.org/features/lent/lent...

Basically, the rules can be summed up like this:

- during the 45-day period of lent

- adults must "fast" every Friday

- in this case, fasting means

- - only 1 full meal allowed on a fast day

- - the only sort of "meat" (animal flesh) allowed during that day is fish

- - no other restrictions (e.g. no restrictions on drink) - but realize that some drinks, such as milk or almost anything else that has significant calories, are considered food and are probably typically reserved for meal time

If Christian and Jews fast like Moses and Jesus , they will actually fast like Muslim albeit with the difference in the number of days. extra 10 days during Moses time. No foods and no drinks during the specified period.

Fasting is a cure to the soul.

Yes, but how they fast is up to them. Fasting, according to the Church, is eating two smaller meals not to equal the quantity of the third and nothing else. I remember my mother telling me this and I remember saying, "That sounds like breakfast, lunch, and dinner." My mother seemed confused that I said that and told me that it WAS breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I then responded that THAT wasn't fasting. She seemed offended.

I imagine that some do not eat at all on fasting days, but most stick to the easier breakfast, lunch and dinner model if they can stick to that.

yes, some of them fast also. however I heard they able to drink.

Fasting is retarded. Not eating because of a religion is just plain stupid.

No, but many of them give up something they like for Lent.

Matthew 4:1-2: Then Jesus was led by the spirit into the desert, to be tempted by the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterwards he was hungry.

Matthew 17:17-20: And Jesus rebuked him, and the devil went out of him, and the child was cured from that hour. Then came the disciples to Jesus secretly, and said: Why could not we cast him out? Jesus said to them: Because of your unbelief. For, amen I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain: Remove from hence hither, and it shall remove: and nothing shall be impossible to you. But this kind is not cast out but by prayer and fasting.

In the time of Christ's Incarnation, practitioners of the Old Testament religion fasted or abstained on Mondays and Thursdays, but Christians opted to take Wednesdays (the day Our Lord was betrayed) and Fridays (the day Our Lord was crucified) as their penitential days.

Wednesdays and Fridays are still days of penance in most Eastern Catholic Churches (and among the Orthodox), but in the Roman Church, only Fridays, as memorials to the day our Lord was crucified, remain as weekly penitential days on which abstinence from meat and other forms of penance are expected as the norm. 1 From the 1983 Code of Canon Law:

Can. 1249 All Christ's faithful are obliged by divine law, each in his or her own way, to do penance. However, so that all may be joined together in a certain common practice of penance, days of penance are prescribed. On these days the faithful are in a special manner to devote themselves to prayer, to engage in works of piety and charity, and to deny themselves, by fulfilling their obligations more faithfully and especially by observing the fast and abstinence which the following canons prescribe.

Can. 1250 The days and times of penance for the universal Church are each Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent.

Can. 1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

Can. 1252 The law of abstinence binds those who have completed their fourteenth year. The law of fasting binds those who have attained their majority, until the beginning of their sixtieth year. Pastors of souls and parents are to ensure that even those who by reason of their age are not bound by the law of fasting and abstinence, are taught the true meaning of penance.

Can. 1253 The Episcopal Conference can determine more particular ways in which fasting and abstinence are to be observed. In place of abstinence or fasting it can substitute, in whole or in part, other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety.

Check with your local Bishops to see what you are bound to in your area. (Most traditional Catholics keep the Friday abstinence whether bound to by their local Bishops or not).

Other penitential days are listed in the table below. In this table, I give the fasting and abstinence practices for those who, out of personal devotion, want to keep the older practices given for the Universal Church in 1962. I also give the requirements according to the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which is what we are bound to.

Note that if any of the Fasting and/or Abstinence Days falls on a Sunday or a first class Feast outside of Lent, the requirements (except for the Eucharistic Fast) are totally abrogated. Those who need to be excused from the obligations of fasting and abstaining for medical reasons (pregnancy, the demands of extraordinarily hard labor, hypoglycemia, etc.) should speak with their priests for a dispensation. True charity trumps all law, and law exists to serve true charity!

To follow the traditional path, it might be easier to follow through on these disciplines if one just decides to fast and abstain on all the days mentioned. Remembering simply to "eat no more than one regular meatless meal and two smaller meatless meals that don't equal the larger meal on all the days marked on my calendar -- and no snacking!" is a lot easier than trying to memorize that chart!

Note that in following these disciplines designed to make one mindful of Christ's sacrifice, to put the world into perspective, and to discipline the body, true charity trumps every other law; Catholics are not Pharisees. In other words, if you are asked to a sit-down dinner at a Protestant's house on Friday, and the host, unaware of Catholic practices, has worked hard to prepare a huge roast beef, eat the beef and shut up (unless you believe this person, upon learning of the discipline, would, say, see your having eaten the meat as a sign of Catholic weakness or hypocrisy and it would cause scandal or something. In other words, weigh the situation and show the Love of Christ).

This same charity applies to yourself: if you truly forget that it's "Fish Friday" and you find yourself eating a big, juicy steak, stop eating the steak and don't beat yourself up over what you've already eaten. If the will isn't involved, there is no culpability (though one should pay better attention next week!).

We fast for many reasons. Even if there were no other reason to fast, we fast out of obedience: Our Lord and His Apostles tell us to. We also fast to discipline the body so that we can focus more intently on the spiritual. And we fast to do penance. This last reason is described well by Pope Clement XIII in his "Appetente Sacro," written in 1759. In this document, he exhorts his Bishops to explain to their flocks the reasons for fasting:

You will begin most appropriately, and with hope of the greatest profit, to recall men to the observance of the holy law of fasting, if you teach the people this: penance for the Christian man is not satisfied by withdrawing from sin, by detesting a past life badly lived, or by the sacramental confession of these same sins. Rather, penance also demands that we satisfy divine justice with fasting, almsgiving, prayer, and other works of the spiritual life. Every wrongdoing -- be it large or small -- is fittingly punished, either by the penitent or by a vengeful God. Therefore we cannot avoid God's punishment in any other way than by punishing ourselves. If this teaching is constantly implanted in the minds of the faithful, and if they drink deeply of it, there will be very little cause to fear that those who have discarded their degraded habits and washed their sins clean through sacramental confession would not want to expiate the same sins through fasting, to eliminate the concupiscence of the flesh. Besides, consider the man who is convinced that he repents of his sins more firmly when he toes not allow himself to go unpunished. That man, already consumed with the love of penance, will rejoice during the season of Lent and on certain other days, when the Church declares that the faithful should fast and gives them the opportunity to bring forth worthy fruits of penance.