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Japanese No. Lent is a season of about six weeks rather than a single day, and Catholic law does not require Mass on its weekdays. Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are not holy days of obligation either; they are days of fasting and abstinence. Every Sunday in Lent is still a day of obligation, as Sundays are all year.
What the Church requires in Lent is short: meat given up on certain days, two days of fasting, and Mass on Sundays as always. The rest of what we think of as Lent, the giving up and the extra prayer, is offered freely. Its pattern is the Lord’s own. Jesus fasted “forty days and forty nights” in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2), and he taught his followers to fast without making a show of it.
What are the holy days of obligation?
They are set by canon 1246 of the Code of Canon Law. It calls Sunday “the primordial holy day of obligation” and adds ten feasts: Christmas, the Epiphany, the Ascension, the Body and Blood of Christ, Mary the Mother of God, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, Saint Joseph, Saints Peter and Paul, and All Saints. On these days Catholics “are obliged to participate in the Mass” and to avoid work that hinders worship and rest (canon 1247). Mass on the evening before counts (canon 1248).
Each bishops’ conference may drop some of these feasts or move them to a Sunday. In the United States six remain: Mary the Mother of God (January 1), the Ascension, the Assumption (August 15), All Saints (November 1), the Immaculate Conception (December 8) and Christmas. Most American dioceses move the Ascension to the following Sunday, and when January 1, August 15 or November 1 falls on a Saturday or a Monday, the obligation to attend Mass is lifted.
No day of Lent is on the list. Two solemnities usually fall during Lent: Saint Joseph on March 19 and the Annunciation on March 25. Saint Joseph is on the universal list but is not a day of obligation in the United States, and the Annunciation is not among the holy days in canon 1246. When a solemnity falls on a Friday in Lent, the Friday abstinence from meat does not apply that day (canon 1251).
Is Ash Wednesday a holy day of obligation?
No. Ash Wednesday does not appear in canon 1246, so Catholics are not required to attend Mass or receive ashes on that day. It is a day of penance: canon 1251 requires both fasting and abstinence from meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. The Church’s liturgical norms describe Ash Wednesday as “the beginning of Lent, which is observed everywhere as a fast day.”
Is Lent mandatory for Catholics?
Some of it is. Canon law makes “the season of Lent” and every Friday of the year penitential times (canon 1250) and sets these minimum rules:
- Catholics aged 14 and older abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and on Fridays, including every Friday of Lent (canons 1251 and 1252).
- Catholics from age 18 “until the beginning of their sixtieth year” also fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday; American dioceses usually state this as ages 18 to 59. A fast means one full meal and two smaller meals that together do not equal a full meal, with no eating between meals.
A pastor can dispense an individual from a day of penance for a just cause or change the obligation into other good works (canon 1245), and bishops’ conferences can substitute other forms of penance, especially charity and prayer (canon 1253). Beyond these rules, the familiar practices of Lent, such as giving something up, going to Mass on weekdays or praying the Stations of the Cross, are voluntary. They follow the pattern of prayer, fasting and almsgiving that Jesus describes in Matthew 6, where he tells his followers, “when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites” (Matthew 6:16).
Do you have to go to Mass on the Sundays of Lent?
Yes. Every Sunday is a day of obligation, in Lent as at any other time. The Catechism teaches that the faithful must take part in Mass on days of obligation “unless excused for a serious reason (for example, illness, the care of infants) or dispensed by their own pastor,” and that “those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a grave sin” (Catechism 2181).
When does Lent begin and end?
Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. In the Catholic calendar, “the forty days of Lent run from Ash Wednesday up to but excluding the Mass of the Lord’s Supper” on Holy Thursday evening, when the Paschal Triduum begins. In 2026 Ash Wednesday fell on February 18 and Good Friday on April 3; in 2027 Ash Wednesday falls on February 10. The forty days recall the fast of Jesus in the wilderness, “forty days and forty nights” (Matthew 4:2).
Early Christians fasted before Easter, but not for a fixed forty days. Irenaeus of Lyons wrote in the late second century that “some think that they should fast one day, others two, yet others more; some, moreover, count their day as consisting of forty hours day and night.” By 334, Athanasius of Alexandria was announcing “the holy fast of forty days” to the churches of Egypt.
Do Orthodox and Protestant Christians keep Lent?
Orthodox Christians keep Great Lent, which begins on Clean Monday, seven weeks before Easter; they do not observe Ash Wednesday. The Orthodox Church in America gives the traditional rule: “No meat is allowed after Meatfare Sunday, and no eggs or dairy products after Cheesefare Sunday.” It adds that these rules exist “not as a Pharisaic ‘burden too hard to bear’” but “as an ideal to be striven for,” and that each person “must do his best in the light of the given ideal.”
Several Protestant churches keep Lent. The Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer lists Ash Wednesday and Good Friday as fasts and observes “Ash Wednesday and the other weekdays of Lent” with “special acts of discipline and self-denial.” The United Methodist Church describes Lent as “a season of forty days, not counting Sundays, which begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday.” Reformed and Baptist churches that follow the Westminster Directory for Public Worship (1645) keep no Lenten season, because it recognizes no holy day under the gospel except the Lord’s day.
For Catholics the law marks out only a few days, and the rest of the season is given freely; the Orthodox hold their stricter rule as an ideal to strive toward. Either way, the fast is kept for God and not for the people watching. Jesus said, “when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites” (Matthew 6:16).
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