By St. John Henry Newman, The Catholic Thing - The season of humiliation, which precedes Easter, lasts for forty days, in memory of our Lord’s long fast in the wilderness. [And] we pray Him, who for our sakes fasted forty days and forty nights, to bless our abstinence to the good of our souls and bodies... We fast by way of penitence, and in order to subdue the flesh. Our Savior had no need of fasting for either purpose. His fasting was unlike ours, as in its intensity, so in its object. And yet when we begin to fast, His pattern is set before us; and we continue the time of fasting till, in number of days, we have equaled His.