St. Thomas

Question: Father, why do we eat fish on Fridays during Lent? How did that get started?
Answer:    This is a great question that led to a profound theological and historical investigation! Since Jesus died on Friday, it was declared a day of fasting and repentance early on in Church history – as early as the first century! While our sacrifices don’t come close to those of Christ, it should help us remember what he did for us. If one abstains, one is not to eat the meat of a warm blooded animal. (Since Christ shed his blood for our salvation, we honor him by not shedding blood that day.) Fish, of course, are cold blooded animals, so the door was opened to another option. (You could eat a reptile that day, but they had been forbidden in kosher laws. While we are not bound by them, it just still seemed wrong. So fish was the solution.) The fish was the logical choice. Jesus cooked fish by the Sea of Galilee after his Resurrection when he reveled himself to the disciples. Jesus told his disciples to go out and be fishers of men. Early Christians identified themselves to one another in the times of persecution by drawing a fish. (Ichthys, Greek for fish, was an anagram for: Jesus Christ, God’s Son and Savior.) So Christians chose to eat fish. Over a millennium, the number of meatless fast days piled up in the Church calendar. Eating meat became a rarity. When Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn, it began the Protest Reformation in England. Meatless ember days vanished from their calendar. Those who remained faithful to the Catholic Church made eating fish a political statement. They chose to keep the old ways, recalling how the fish was a Christian symbol for a persecuted people forced to worship in secret. Fish on Friday took on new importance at that time and fused with Catholic identity. So, that is why we eat fish on Fridays in Lent.