The Lenten season is how the church helps us to prepare for the celebration of the Easter Triduum in which we remember the great paschal mystery, the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ. A traditional part of Lent is to discipline the flesh and curb the passions of the body so Christ becomes a more important part of our lives.

Fasting, abstinence, penance, almsgiving and other forms of mortification are part of the precepts of the church, designed “to guarantee to the faithful the indispensable minimum in the spirit of prayer and moral effort in the growth in love of God and neighbor” (CCC 2041, 2043). During Lent, we take our cue from the Savior himself, who fasted for 40 days in the desert and resisted the temptations of the devil. As the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” teaches, during the “season of Lent (the church) unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert” (CCC 540).

The practice of a Christian disciplining the flesh by mortification also comes to us from the instructions of St. Paul in sacred Scripture. (See Rom 6, 7, 8, 9; 1 Cor 3; 2 Cor 7; Gal 5; Eph 2.) It is also something spoken of many times in the teaching of the early Church Fathers, and mortifications have been a continuous tradition in our church. In fact, many saints throughout the ages have written about the profound spiritual fruits that come from self-control, self-discipline and mortification of the flesh.

In other words, our Lenten practices are not just some kind of empty pious devotion; they really help us to become better followers of Christ.

In the language of Latin, which is the primary language of us Latin-rite Catholics, the word for flesh and the word for meat are the same, “carne.” You should be able to recognize this word as the root of carnivore, incarnation, and carnival. The word “carnival” comes from the two Latin words “carne” and “vale” — one meaning flesh, the other meaning “goodbye.” Carnivals are celebrated the day before Lent begins as a way of saying goodbye to the flesh.

During the season of Lent, we discipline and restrict our attachment to the “flesh,” or in Latin “carne.” As a witness to this discipline we restrict our consumption of meat, which is also “carne” in Latin. In this way, abstaining from meat during Lent is a spiritual act of devotion that is part of the overall Lenten practice of disciplining, mortifying and denying the flesh.

So, abstaining from meat makes sense, but why is fish a substitute?

Fish has an important symbolism in the life of the church. The symbol of the fish has been popular since the earliest moments in the life of the church. The fish plays a major role in the Gospels as the material of Christ’s miracles, as a symbol of following Christ, as the livelihood they are called from for many of the apostles, as a symbol of the tomb and Resurrection, and as the breakfast of the risen Lord.

In fact, the apostles of Christ, and then our bishops, are often referred to as “fishers of men” in our church. Followers of Christianity were at one time called “pisciculi,” which takes its root from the Latin word for fish.

The symbol of the fish was often used among Christians as a type of password during times of persecution. If two strangers met and were unsure whether each other was a Christian, one would draw a line on the ground like ). If the other was a Christian he or she would complete the symbol with an interlinked reverse arc like (, forming the outline of a fish. In this way they both identified themselves as Christian. So, the fish became a symbol for the community of faith.

The Greek word for fish is “ichthus.” It is spelled in Greek as “iota chi theta upsilon sigma.” This Greek word for fish became an important Christian acrostic, an arrangement of letters in a word where each letter represents another word or words. In the language of Greek, ichthus was an acrostic for “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior”: Iesous (Jesus), CHristos (Christ), THeou (of God), Uiou (the Son) and Soter (the Savior). The word for fish and the image of a fish, and the phrase it symbolized, became a sign of the great treasure of the church, Jesus’ revelation of himself.

The ichthus was also considered important because it summarized what St. Peter confessed to Christ in Matthew 16. In answer to Christ’s question, “Who do you say that I am?” St. Peter confesses to Christ, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” This is the phrase symbolized by the ichthus, the fish. Therefore, the word for fish (ichthus) and the symbol of the fish became an important emblem of the Christian church founded on the apostles by Christ and led by St. Peter.

During Lent when the church leads us to discipline our attachment to “flesh” and abstain from carne, or meat, we eat fish instead as a sign that we are to renounce what the world offers and substitute it with the Gospel and the revelation given to us by Christ. This is an appropriate symbol because we are not just supposed to listen to the teachings of Christ; we are supposed to actually receive his teaching and his revelation within ourselves as real food. In this way, the teaching of Christ becomes a source of spiritual nutrition and sustenance during our Lenten — and lifelong — pilgrimage.

Father Farnan is diocesan associate director for religious education and parochial vicar at Risen Lord in Pittsburgh’s Marshall-Shadeland neighborhood.