This year, we’re celebrating 1700 years of the Nicene Creed. That’s the creed you usually say at Mass on Sundays—the longer one.
The Nicene Creed is amazing. It’s full of mystery, poetry, and historical fact.
It took a long time to hammer out every line of it. Quite a lot of blood was shed along the way.
But the Nicene Creed is more than just a set of religious principles. It’s a call to each one of you to stand up and be counted in the church today.
When you say it at Mass, you are staking your claim as a believing Christian who draws strength from the past and looks forward to the future.
But wouldn’t you like to say it with a bit more meaning every Sunday?
This Lent, I’m going to take you on a personal tour of the Creed by choosing some of my favourite bits and unpacking them a little.
These are the bits when I really snap back into focus and pay attention, because they speak to me very powerfully.
You open the Creed with the words “I believe.” You will also repeat this phrase three more times before you reach the “Amen.”
In the Hebrew scriptural tradition, four is the number of creation. Four rivers flowed out of Eden; the traditional Passover meal involves four cups of wine and four questions.
There are also four winds, four points of the compass, and four “corners” of the earth.
Four is a number that builds things. That’s what happens when you say “I believe” in the Creed.
You’re going to spend the next minute and 20 seconds verbally building an entire structure of core Catholic beliefs.
(That’s in English; it takes almost exactly as long to recite it in Latin. But if you’re singing it in Latin with the Missa de Angelis setting, it’s two minutes 20 seconds.)
After Vatican II, we used to say “We believe” in the English translation of the Creed. And yet the original Latin word is Credo, which means “I believe.”
What’s the difference? There’s a world of difference.
“We believe” is a group statement. But sadly, group statements don’t always reflect the real beliefs of individuals in the group.
We also know how easy it is to hide behind a collective decision, especially when things go wrong.
God wants an individual relationship with you—and some accountability from you.
He wants you to say out loud every Sunday that you, personally, believe all this. That’s why we’ve now swapped back to “I believe,” and I think that’s healthy.
When you say “I believe” in the Creed, you should say it with real fervour.
Try swapping the emphasis to the “I.” See how it alters the meaning immediately?
“I believe in one God, the Father almighty!” “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord!” “I believe in the Holy Spirit!” “I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church!”
Next time you say the Creed at Mass, do this out loud. It really startles the people in the pew front of you.
Each of these statements of belief in the Trinity is gigantic and takes a lot of unpacking.
But I do want you to notice how important the church is in this sequence. You could say it’s almost the fourth person of the Trinity in our creed.
We don’t “believe in the church” in the same way we believe in “the existence of God.”
But if you’re a Catholic, there is only one church that exists across time and space. It subsists in the Catholic Church.
It’s not lots of smaller churches stuck together that decided to call themselves “one church” after a lot of synodal dialogue.
It’s holy—it’s the bride of Jesus Christ. It exists to make us holy as well, despite—or perhaps through—all the faults of the people in it.
It’s catholic in that it’s universal. It exists for the whole world and is open to everyone.
And it’s apostolic—it’s come to us directly from the apostles and faithfully maintains everything Jesus taught them in his ministry.
But of course, every time you say the Creed, you need to ask yourself: Do I believe all this stuff?
Don’t say the Creed if you don’t personally believe every line of it. Otherwise, you’ll get into the habit of lying in church, and I don’t want you to do that.
Say “I believe” like you really mean it—and really mean it.
Philippa Martyr’s book Witness is available from all good Catholic bookstores and online.
