At the very center of Sunday Mass, we recite either the Nicene or the Apostles’ Creed. Both Creeds sum up the core tenets of the Catholic faith in short statements; they are authoritative summaries of what God has revealed and has done. And the Catholic Church insists that we believe the points enunciated. To many, this insistence is an imposition. Is it so wrong for different people to come together to worship God insofar as they understand him, even if those understandings diverge? Isn’t it rigid to require a statement of belief?
Such objections miss the point. The Creed’s sole purpose is not merely to include some people and exclude others. Rather, it is a summary of revelation. The Creed gives us a privileged contact with God by laying out the most important truths of revelation in what we call the articles of faith, propositions about God revealed to us by God. We need such a summary. The Creed does not say everything about God—nothing could—but the rest of the Catholic faith is implicit within it. God revealed himself to us, and through the act of faith we assent to that revelation in its fullness. To believe God is to believe all that he says, and by praying the Creed we respond to and accept what he has said. The nature of this belief demands that one accepts the Creed in its entirety. If one accepts one thing God reveals because God has revealed it, one accepts everything else.
When, by the gift of faith, we pray the Creed, our minds reach out to God. By faith in the articles of the Creed, we have true knowledge of God; he is present in our minds by this knowledge. His presence in our minds does not typically come with blaring trumpets or brilliant visions, but it is a sublime theophany nonetheless. It may seem strange to think that mere words give us such a contact with God, for with words one can say both, “I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages,” and “I believe that there is a jar of peanut butter in the cupboard.” One may find that saying both statements feels the same, commanding the same amount of attention and exciting the same emotions. Nonetheless, the latter is banal, and the former is transformative. Words point us to realities beyond themselves. By leading our minds to the reality of God, such statements reach a spiritual fruition. Knowing God can begin a relationship with him.
The Creed gives true knowledge of God, and only true knowledge can lead us to love him. It transposes us into a higher mode of living and allows us to live a transformed life, a life directed towards God and eternal salvation with him. When we are used to repeating the Creed week after week, it is easy to forget its significance. But it behooves us to ponder the saving truth that it enunciates. When we meditate upon the articles of the Creed, like the truth of Jesus’s lordship and sonship, we can consider our life in their light. We can come to know and love God more deeply and learn to live a life more and more conformed to his own.
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Image: Council of Nicaea, Wikimedia Commons
