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As many of you know, after the homily at Mass we pray a long prayer together, beginning with “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty…”. This is the Nicene Creed, or the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed to be technical. I am sure that many of us, including myself, have wondered why we say the Nicene Creed; there are times when I don't pay attention to the words I am reciting... or even understand what they mean!
The Nicene Creed actually has a strong significance within the Rite of the Mass and our proclamation of the prayer as Catholics. We are going to dive into what the prayer means and why it is important to profess it (1).
Simply put, the Nicene Creed is the purpose of our Christian faith summarized into a prayer that focuses on the truths on which the Church stands. In the creed we state: “I believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.” The four Marks of the Church are these exact words in which we profess, all having a different meaning. A “mark” is basically a distinguishable trait that makes the church unique.
The first mark is “One”. What this means is since God is one in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so the church is therefore one. We are also one in what we believe, we all profess one God and we are united to one God. The second mark is “Holy”. The Catholic Church is within itself Holy, because it was founded by Jesus Christ, who is the Holiest of Holies. Our mission in the Church is to go out and call others on to holiness. In this context, “holy” means “separate”. This means that the Church is called to live in the world but not of it. The third mark is “Catholic”. Catholic with a small “c” means universal. Every member of the Catholic Church is baptized in unity through the sacrament. Another within the Church is to call together into oneness because we are meant to grow with each other closer to God. The fourth and final mark is “Apostolic”. Since the Apostles were the initial members of the newly made Catholic Church by Jesus Christ, they spread the Church’s message to others, hence the Catholic Church being apostolic (2).
The importance of professing our faith in the creed is meant to serve as a reminder of what we believe. By starting the Creed, we are saying that we truly believe what we are about to say. I BELIEVE in God the Father Almighty, and so on. We remind ourselves through the Creed that we are really professing our faith and love for God. To end the Creed, we all together say “Amen”: also translated as “I believe”. We summarize the Creed with this one word, but it translates to us confirming that we believe everything we have just professed.
The importance of stating the Creed is to remind ourselves of how we state our believes in the Church. The next time you go to mass, I encourage you to pay more attention to what you are about to say, rather than simply going through the motions. Doing this can truly make a difference.
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