That fish looks enlightened af
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
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That's one seal-looking shark
What would you even preach to a fish?
"And then Jesus walked on water."
"He did what?"
"...Erm, never mind. Did I tell you about how he once fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish?"
"He what?!"
Matthew 4:18-22 perhaps?
Tap for spoiler
Jesus Calls His First Disciples
18 As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 19 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 20 At once they left their nets and followed him.
21 Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, 22 and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
"Screw this, anything is better than fishing!" seems like a trope at the time.
Found more than I'd hoped on Wikipedia:
So in the thirteenth century, Antonio of Padua was fed up with how unimpressed his (supposedly heretic) audience was with his preaching. So he literally went to preach to the fishes instead who, surprisingly, stuck their heads out and listened. This then impressed the heretics so much, they too started to listen.
Anyway, 1654 or about 450 years later, on the feast day of Antonio, his namesake António Vieira, a Jesuit Monk in Brazil, gave the "Sermon of Saint Anthony to the Fish". In it, he argued against the cruelty of the colonizers against the natives and condemned slavery. (Also he includes a list of good fishes and bad fishes)
Accordingly, three days later, Vieira secretly set sail for Lisbon to plead the cause of the Indians, and in April 1655 he obtained from King John IV a series of decrees which placed the missions under the Society of Jesus, with Vieira himself as their superior, and prohibited the enslavement of the natives, except in certain specific cases.
Conflicts between the settlers and the Jesuits in Brazil went back as far as 1549, and were to last until the latter were banished in 1760.
This is not the full story and the Jesuits probably wanted the natives alive and un-enslaved mostly for the sake of more easily converting them to Christianity, but it still sounds cool, that they opposed the settlers for so long.
LOL
This is the best image I've seen all week!
Good olde Böcklin!
I love how they took a metaphor and made it literal. It's great work to do that.
You may want to ask yourself just who the fish they hooked were.