Church discipline and popular practice together. Paenitemini and the Code of Canon Law make the whole of Lent a penitential season; Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of both fasting and abstinence, and the Fridays of Lent are days of abstinence from meat. The rules bind those of a certain age — abstinence from fourteen, fasting from the completion of the eighteenth year until the beginning of the sixtieth — but the season is asked of everyone, and the customary Lenten sacrifices taken up voluntarily belong to popular piety rather than to law.

On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday keep the fast: one full meal, with two smaller meals that together do not equal a full one, and nothing between meals; abstain from meat on those days and on the Fridays of Lent. Choose one thing to give up for the whole season and one thing to take up, and let the two be connected — set aside the money not spent on what you gave up and give it away before Easter. Add a daily practice you can actually keep: ten minutes of Scripture, the Stations of the Cross on Fridays, or the Seven Penitential Psalms. Go to confession during the season. Those excused from fasting by age, illness, pregnancy or hard labour should keep the season by prayer and charity instead.

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