Can I Cheat on Sundays During Lent?
In addition to periodically fasting and abstaining from meat, many Catholics add other disciplines for Lent. They give up creature comforts ― coffee, chocolate, etc. ― to refocus upon the Creator of those comforts. They try to acquire new habits. But should these disciplines be maintained on the Sundays of Lent?
A 2019 note on the American bishops’ website commented that our additional disciplines are “often more effective if they are continuous, i.e., kept on Sundays as well. That being said, such practices are not regulated by the Church, but by individual conscience.”1
But why might someone relent on Sundays?
It’s not because Lent is more than 40 days. Lent lasts from Ash Wednesday to Maundy Thursday ― the Thursday before Holy Week and Easter. That’s 44 days. Discarding Sundays makes it 38.
One might relent, rather, because Sunday is what the Second Vatican Council called “the original feast day.”2 Sundays commemorate Jesus’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. Historically, one never fasts on Sundays. Even in previous eras, when Catholics fasted on every day of Lent ― not just Ash Wednesday and Good Friday ― they still never fasted on Sundays. Sundays, Saint Augustine said, represent “not toil, but rest and gladness. For this reason we do not fast.”3
Humanly speaking, our disciplines will be ingrained more effectively if they’re maintained on Sundays. This is especially true when trying to form good new habits. But continuing our disciplines on Sundays does not express a greater devotion to Jesus. It simply expresses a different devotion. Neither is relenting on Sundays “cheating.” It is, on the contrary, a decision to memorialize Christ’s resurrection.
See the USCCB’s 2019 Lenten Guide, “Thursday After Ash Wednesday,” available at https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/liturgical-year/lent/march-7.
Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §106.
Augustine, Letter 55, §28.