Lenten practice of the early Church.

The Church did not invent fasting but merely adopted and developed the fasting practices of Judaism and the ideas of the Greco-Roman world regarding fasting. Judaism knew only one fasting one-day binding on all: the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).
But the mark of holiness was to fast twice a week – Monday and Thursday. This is observed by the Pharisee in the Gospel of Luke (18:12). On special occasions or in times of need, public fast days were proclaimed to solicit help from God.
The Jews understood fasting as a supplication to God, a sign that they meant their prayers, and also as repentance and reconciliation. In fasting before God, they confessed their sinfulness and asked for forgiveness and help. The two aspects belong together for the Jews because it is for them; every need is a sign of their disobedience to God. By fasting, they want to return to God. The early Church adopts the practice of two fast days a week. But it consciously separates itself from Judaism by commemorating Christ’s arrest and crucifixion by declaring Wednesday and Friday as fast days. In the East and Spain, Christians also fast on Mondays, and in the West, often on Saturdays in preparation for Sunday. In addition to the not-so-strict weekly fasting, Christians were preparing for Easter by fasting for one or three days, then for the whole of Holy Week, and then, from the end of the third century, for the entire forty days. In the two days immediately before Easter, the perfect abstinence from food was required; on Wednesdays.

On Fridays and during Lent, one ate in the ninth hour (= fifteen hours) or, as St. Benedict prescribes in his Rule, until the evening. The monks, for themselves, the Lenten practice of the universal Church. Many ate only every other day, and others – especially in Lent – fasted for five days and ate only on Saturdays and Sundays. In addition, they imposed restrictions on their food choices. They abstained from meat, eggs, milk, cheese, and wine. Their usual fasting food was bread, salt, and water, legumes, herbs, vegetables, dried berries, dates, and figs.
– “Yet the heroes of monastic asceticism preferred …raw food over cooked food. Cooked vegetables had already the character of a festive meal.” (2)
The universal Church forbade the eating of meat and wine during Lent. However, some movements within the Church called for a general abstinence from meat and wine, such as the Manichaeans, the Apotactians, and the Montanists. Against these dualistic tendencies, the Church defended itself by pointing out that all animals and plants were created by God and given to man for his enjoyment and that they were, therefore all good. The Church opposed the ideologizing fasting and the prohibition of certain foods and fought for the freedom that Christ brought us, freedom from the law and all legalistic thinking.
The clash between the Jewish practice of fasting and the practice of some of the Greek world can be felt in the New Testament. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christians are supposed to fast. They have distinguished themselves from the Pharisees, who disfigure their faces
to let people know they are fasting. The disciples are to fast in secret, not before men, but before the Father, and they are to with a cheerful countenance (cf. Mt 6:16-18). It is said of Jesus that he fasted for forty days in the desert. But he does not impress the Pharisees as a man who fasts. On the contrary, he eats and drinks with the people and shares their joy, so much so that they even call him a glutton and a drunkard even his disciples have to take the rebuke, why do they not fast like the Pharisees and John’s disciples? And Jesus answers: “Can the guests at a wedding mourn while the Bridegroom is with them? And the days will come when the Bridegroom shall be absent from them. The Bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast” (Matthew 9:15).
For Jesus, fasting is a sign of mourning. For grief, however. He has no place among his disciples, for in Jesus, the time of salvation and thus of joy has already begun. Now, it is time to let God gift God. This place indicates a dispute between the early Church and Jewish practice. On the one hand. Fasting is overcome by the coming of Jesus as the Messiah; on the other hand, it is not yet final. There is still sin and death. Only when these are finally destroyed will Lent lose its meaning. Now, the disciples are fasting because they are waiting for the Lord. So, their fasting takes on a new meaning. It is no longer a manifestation of grief and repentance but a fast in anticipation of the Lord’s coming.
It has an eschatological meaning. In fasting, Christians confess that salvation is not yet here so that they are entirely penetrated by it. In their fasting, they look back to this salvation to be filled with joy more and more, which, for them, is the joy of the coming of Christ, the joy of the wedding celebrated with them by their divine Bridegroom.
Acts tells us that the community of the local Church fasted before sending Paul and Barnabas. Fasting was in preparation for laying hands before being commissioned to preach (Acts 14:1-3). The Didache, the first non-scriptural Christian text, requires fasting in preparation for baptism. “The baptizer and the baptized and others to whom it is possible, “Let them fast before baptism. Instruct at least the baptizer to fast for a day or two.”