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 Abstinence is a form of fasting. Fasting and self-denial are not personal preferences that can be discarded if we find them difficult. Fasting also gives us spiritual authority. Jesus explained in Matthew 17:21 that certain type of evil spirits can only be driven out through prayer and fasting. When we are fasting, we should not put on a sour face or parade around acting pious. It is a hidden thing.

Every Catholic over the age of 14 should abstain from meat on Fridays; during Lent, this is under the pain of sin. Many today present skillfully crafted arguments why they do not have to abstain. " The church no longer requires it." they say. " we can substitute some other form of mortification or do something nice to someone instead." But the church did not abolish Friday abstinence , she decreed that it is no longer a sin not to do so. The reason the church removed the penalty of sin is so that our freely willed mortification would be more efficacious: so that it would produce more grace. Quite the opposite occurred. Hardly a Catholic abstains from meat on Fridays outside of Lent anymore, nor do they acquire the spiritual authority over fallen angels that self-denial affords.

If Sunday is a mini-Easter, then Friday is a mini-Lent. Choosing some other mortification or doing something nice for someone, whatever that means, fails to produce a necessary reality in the Christian life: Spiritual influence. Fasting creates it. 

To increase the austerity of the practice as one accustomed to it, one might eat only the one meal, or partake of only bread and water .( Not suitable for the sick to take only bread and water, eat vegan food on fasting days is enough ). There are many people nowadays who are resorting to extreme fasting for its recently discovered health benefits, and they are doing it for secular reasons. Cannot we, who are doing it for faith reasons, match their intensity?

Sabbatine privilege of brown scapular:

1. Persevered in chastity , observe chastity, the 6 th and the 9th commandment.

2. Everyday recite the Little office of Mary or 

observed the fast days of the Church and abstained from flesh meat on Wednesdays and Saturdays  or

With the permission from your confessor, recite five decades of rosary everyday.

3. Always wear the brown scapular until death.

4. Live a good life.

The privilege:

These people would be released from purgatory on the first Saturday after their death.

Those who cannot fulfill the above requirements but wear a scapular until death:

Mary promises those who wear the brown scapular must not be sent to hell.