viii
MOVEABLE FEASTS.
EASTER SUNDAY, Monday, and Tuesday.
ASCENSION DAY, or the Thursday forty days after Easter. WHITSUNDAY, Monday, and Tuesday.
CORPUS CHRISTI, being the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday,
FASTING DAYS.
The forty days in Lent.
The Ember Days, at the four seasons, being the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of the first week in Lent of Whitsun week, of the third week in September, and of the third week in Advent.
The Vigils or Eves of Whitsunday, of Saints Peter and Paul, of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, of All Saints, and of Christmas Day.
All Wednesdays and Fridays in Advent.
N.B.- When any fasting- day falls upon a Sunday, it is to be observed on the Saturday before. If the feast falls upon a Monday, that Eve is kept upon Saturday.
ABSTINENCE
DAYS.
The Sundays in Lent, unless leave be given to the con trary.
All the Friday in the year: but if Christmas Day falls upon a Friday, it is not a day of abstinence.
N.B.- That the Catholic Church commands all her children, upon Sundays and Holy- days of Obligation, to be present at the great Eucharistic Sacrifice, which we. call the Mass, and to rest from servile work on those days, and to keep them holy.
2ndly- She commands them to abstain from flesh on all days of fasting and abstinence; and on fasting days to eat but one meal.
3rdly- She commands them to confess their sins to their pastors at least once a- year.
4thly- She commands them to receive the Blessed Sacrament at least once a- year, and that at Easter, viz. between Palm Sunday and Low Sunday.
The fourth Council of Lateran, Can. 21, ordains:" That every one of the faithful of both sexes, after they come to the years of discretion, shall in private, faithfully confess all their sins, at least once a- year, to their pastor: and take care to fulfil, to the best of their power, the penance enjoined them: receiving reverently, at least at Easter, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, unless, perhaps, by the counsel of their pastor, for some reasonable cause, they judge ut proper to abstain from it for a time, otherwise let them be excluded out of the Church whilst ing, and when they die be deprived of Christian berist