Lent is rapidly approaching, and that means it’s time to think about fasting. These days Catholics are only obliged to fast two days a year: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, both of which fall in the Lenten season.
This practice of fasting twice a year is the bare minimum expected of us as Catholic Christians, and so we should be careful to view it as a spiritual floor rather than a spiritual ceiling. If we care about actually growing in the spiritual life, then we need to fast more frequently.
This point was made by the US Catholic bishops back in 1966 in their Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence. The document was a reflection building on St Paul VI’s apostolic constitution Poenitemini, and to my knowledge the bishops’ directives remain in effect to this day:
