days of penance
“Conversion is accomplished in daily life by gestures of reconciliation, concern for the poor, the exercise and defense of justice and right, by the admission of faults to one’s brethren, fraternal correction, revision of life, examination of conscience, spiritual direction, acceptance of suffering, endurance of persecution for the sake of righteousness. Taking up one’s cross each day and following Jesus is the surest way of penance. The seasons and days of penance in the course of the liturgical year Lent, and each Friday in memory of the death of the Lord.”1
All members of the Christian faithful are, in their own way, bound to do penance in virtue of divine law; in order that all may be joined in a common observance of penance, penitential days are prescribed in which the Christian faithful in a special way pray, exercise works of piety and charity, and deny themselves by fulfilling their responsibilities more faithfully, and especially by observing fast and abstinence according to the norm of the following canons:
• All Fridays through the year and the time of Lent are penitential days and times throughout the universal Church, which are especially appropriate for spiritual exercises, penitential liturgies, pilgrimages as signs of penance, voluntary self-denial such as fasting and almsgiving.
• Abstinence from eating meat or some other food or another penitential practice, according to the prescriptions of the conference of bishops, is to be observed on Fridays throughout the year unless they are solemnities. Abstinence and fast are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and on Good Friday.
• All persons who have completed their fourteenth year are bound by the law of abstinence. All adults are bound by the law of fast up to the beginning of their sixtieth year. Nevertheless, pastors and parents are to see to it that minors who are not bound by the law of fast and abstinence are educated in an authentic sense of penance.
• It is for the conference of bishops to determine more precisely the observance of fast and abstinence and to substitute in whole or in part for fast and abstinence other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety and missionary works.
• Diocesan bishops can proclaim special days of penance for their own diocese or territories, but only for individual occasions (per modum actus).