The Catholic Dispatch wishes to share some write-in questions on Lent. They were asked by a person who wished to have answers for any non-catholics that might ask about it. The questions were answered accordingly, and were not designed to explain the details of the disciplinary laws which Catholics are obliged to follow.
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>The main questions I have concerning Lent are as follows:
>1.) Why do we not eat meat for the forty days or at least Fridays?
>2.) Is it simply a sacrifice that we are offering by giving up >something for forty days?
>Why not offer something for our spiritual growth instead of giving up.
>What happens at the end of forty days?
>Thank you for this information.

1.) The Forty Days of Lent starting from Ash Wednesday until Holy Saturday (excluding all Sundays) is "observed as a preparation for the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord and as a time of penitence, prayer and fasting, spiritual and physical. Forty is the number of days of the Flood, of the years of the Israelites' wandering, of the days of the fast of Elias, of Moses on Sinai and of our Lord in the desert." - From "A Catholic Dictionary", (Attwater) 1954
"Fasting" means to only eat ONE full meal per day, with the two others being very light, together which wouldn't make one full meal.
"Abstinence" means to abstain from eating flesh meat. This is often confused with fasting. Fish is not considered flesh meat. All the Fridays of the year (in honor of the day on which our Savior died) are days of complete abstinence unless a Holy Day of obligation falls on a Friday, such as the Feast of the Assumption, or Christmas.
Traditionally, fasting has been observed for the full 40 days with complete abstinence from meat on the Fridays (and 3 Ember days), and partial abstinence on the other fast days.
"Partial abstinence" means to eat meat only at the main, full meal.

2.) Everything - the Redemption, the Sacraments, sacrifice, penance, grace, prayer, and working out our salvation in general "in fear and trembling" as St. Paul says - all focus on the fact and existence of "original sin" in which we were born.
The first man and woman, Adam and Eve, by their first grave sin, destroyed for all mankind the balance of nature making man's body unruly and weakening his will-power to keep his body in subjection. Baptism washes away the guilt of original sin but does not rid us of the effects - the pull of our lower nature to disobey God by sinning against the divine order of things.
God gave man a spiritual, immortal soul. The two main faculties of the soul are man's INTELLECT and his WILL.
The "intellect" knows what is good, and the "will" can either follow it, or sin by acting against it. Christ redeemed us, making available sufficient grace for all men (if they seek it) to enlighten their intellect and strengthen their will so as to, in a sense, regain that proper balance that Adam and Eve lost for us. This is the meaning of life, and we are all called to seek this as the Saints have done to a most excellent degree.
Christ founded the Catholic Church to guide men's intellects to what is good, and He instituted the seven Sacraments to strengthen man's will by grace so that he may follow that which he knows to be good. It is man's obligation to always strive to know the Catholic religion and to know his obligations according to the teachings of the Church. This is "conscience". We must then strive to follow what we know is true and good by our intellect, and to always strive to know this correctly. Man is free to follow his conscience but he does NOT have a right to form his conscience the way he pleases. He MUST form his conscience according to the teachings which the Catholic Church has always taught down through the ages. There is a serious heresy infecting the Church today which is contrary to this truth: This so-called "liberty of conscience and worship" is a grave error against the Faith; Pope Pius IX in "Quanta Cura", quoting St. Augustine, called this modern error the "liberty of perdition".

3.) Man sins by a weak will-power. It is through prayer and sacrifice, and God's grace, that man strengthens his will-power to avoid sin. Giving up something such as meat on Friday helps to strengthen our will, mortifies the passions of the body, and gains for us graces. We also gain grace because we obey the Church; obedience further helps to break our self-will which is the source of so much sin. Such sacrifices as these also satisfy for our sins.
It is man's obligation to do these things above and beyond this, but the Church makes this much mandatory under pain of sin because it gives man a starting point and keeps sacrifice upon his mind. Without it, man might fall to doing none at all and even forget about it altogether, and thus lose his soul in hell for eternity.

4.) At the end of the forty days is the Resurrection (Easter Sunday).

ADDENDUM: Some people mistakenly think that the "40 days of Lent" include the Sundays. Were we to count from Ash Wednesday, including each Sunday, we would find that the 40th day would fall on Palm Sunday! But this is not so.
The Sundays are undeniably part of the Lenten season, but they are not part of the penitential 40 days of Lent. Sunday is a Holy Day of Obligation; the Day of Rest; the Lord's Day. Catholics have never been obliged to fast on such days. When we count from Ash Wednesday and EXCLUDE all Sundays, we find that the 40th day is Holy Saturday, the day before Our Lord's resurrection, as it should be. The 40 days of penance and mortification are fulfilled without being contiguous.