Abstinence from refreshment; complete abstinence from food or drink observed by Catholics before receiving the Eucharist. The law of fasting is a Catholic disciplinary regulation, authorizing the taking of only one complete meal in a day, in addition to a small quantity of food or drink in the morning and evening. The black fast was a fast in which not only flesh meat but milk, cheese, butter, or eggs were forbidden. The fast prescribed for the worthy reception of the Holy Eucharist is the total abstinence from food and drink from midnight. Midnight may be reckoned by any accepted time, legal, natural, or regional. Nothing having the nature of food or drink is permitted which is taken after the manner of eating or drinking, i.e.,introduced into the mouth from without after midnight and swallowed. Whatever is digestible, strictly speaking, has the nature of food or drink, yet the matter partly depends on the common estimation of men. A small amount, if inhaled or accidentally swallowed as mixed with saliva, does not break the fast. The law of fasting does not hold for communion received in the probable danger of death or to save the Sacrament from irreverence. It is relaxed for the sick.