Ash Wednesday is a Day of Fasting and Abstinence

Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are to be observed as special days of Fasting and Abstinence. Fasting means reducing the amount of food which we would normally eat.

  Abstinence means not eating meat. The law of Fasting binds all those who are between eighteen years of age and sixty years of age.  The law of Abstinence binds everyone age fourteen and older (except for the frail and the sick). Parents are urged to foster the spirit and practice of penance among those who are too young to be subjects of either law.

From the Bishop:

St. Patrick's Day Dispensation

In view of the fact that St. Patrick's Day this year falls on a Friday of Lent, I hereby grant a dispensation from the Church's law of abstinence for all in the Diocese of Phoenix. I also request that all who avail themselves of this dispensation perform some other work of penance, for example:

• a prayerful visit to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament
• fasting from watching a television show
• visiting someone who is sick or in prison

We do penance in imitation of Jesus' fast of 40 days in the desert, eager to draw nearer to Him in love.    

+Thomas J. Olmsted  
Bishop of Phoenix