Lenten fasting
Forty-day dietary restriction
Lenten fasting is the Christian practice of restricting food intake during Lent, the forty-day period before Easter.
Traditionally this meant one full meal daily with meat forbidden, though modern observance varies widely—from giving up a single indulgence like chocolate to maintaining strict dietary limits.
The practice commemorates Jesus's forty days of fasting in the wilderness.
- abstinenceVoluntary forgoing of indulgences
- giving upChoosing to stop trying
- sacrificeGiving up something precious
- penanceSelf-mortification for wrongdoing
- Ash WednesdayLent's opening day
ash · purple · forty · forty days · wilderness · prayer · almsgiving · hunger · meat · meatless Friday · fish · fish fry · bread · bread and water · water · desert · temptation · self-denial
- FastingRamadan, Yom Kippur, Tisha B'Av, forty days, Ashura
- Polish CatholicismBlack Madonna, Pope John Paul II, Easter blessing, blessing of food, pilgrimages