By Joel Padgett
Connecting Creed and Life
Editor’s note: For 2025, the weekly Connecting Faith and Life column will be renamed Connecting Creed and Life. To celebrate the 2025 Jubilee Year and the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the columns will consist of reflections on the Nicene Creed, corresponding with related paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).
“Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible” (cf. CCC 325-336)
As we meditate upon the Nicene Creed over the course of this Jubilee Year of 2025, we have so far reflected upon our belief in “one God, the Father almighty.” This week, we turn our attention to the following words: “maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.” There are two main aspects that the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” (CCC) expounds upon when discussing this truth of our faith: “the bond, deep within creation, that unites heaven and earth, and distinguishes the one from the other” (CCC 326) and the existence, nature and role of angels.
If you are seeking more of an explanation of these truths, I invite you to read paragraphs 325-336 in the CCC (if you don’t have a copy, the text can be found online for free at the Holy See’s website vatican.va), or listen to Day 46 and Day 47 of Father Mike Schmitz’s “Catechism in a Year” podcast. The purpose of the “Connecting Creed and Life” column is mainly to relate an aspect of these truths to our daily lives, that is, to reflect upon how these truths impact our lives and the difference these truths make — or potentially ought to make — in our lives.
When I was pondering these numbers, it reminded me of a statue at my grandparents’ house of a Clydesdale wearing blinders and pulling a heavy-laden cart. How often many of us go through life carrying substantial burdens and blinded from the fullness of reality … living in such a way as if this world — the merely visible world — were everything? Could you imagine if a child in its mother’s womb were to argue that there was no reality beyond its own direct, immediate experience in utero? It’s not a question about the goodness of the mother’s womb but the harm that comes from a limited perception of the grandeur of reality. When our eyes are opened increasingly wider to Christ and ever keep before them our heavenly and definitive homeland, the cares and worries of this world are transformed from a “heavy-laden cart” that we pull alone to a gentle yoke that is shared with Christ: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light” (Matthew 11:29-30). Furthermore, far from blinding us to the cares of others, faith opens our eyes to the fullness of reality — heavenly and earthly — and increasingly moves us to love others: “the love of Christ urges us” (2 Corinthians 5:14).
Likewise, the Catechism discusses in these paragraphs that God created both the visible and invisible world. In doing so, it mentions that angels are spiritual beings that do not have a body, whereas human beings are composed of spirit and body … a unity of body and soul. For those of you who are familiar with St. John Paul II’s “theology of the body,” you will recognize just how much rests upon this truth (if you’re unfamiliar with it, please look into it; it may very well transform your life), and you may also realize the incredible amount of suffering that people experience when they deny the essential unity of their soul and body. So many struggles we witness in society have as their root a reduction of ourselves to a sort of “consciousness” that is divorceable from our body. In this mentality, our body is not truly “who I am,” and consequently, “I should be able to do whatever I want with my body.” Sadly, it’s often after the fact that we come to the realization that what we did to/with our body also affected our soul. Although it is true that our souls are able to exist apart from our bodies (which is what happens when we die), it is so important to keep in mind that our bodies and souls are unity and that it is ultimately God’s plan for them to be united definitively. We were not created to be pseudo-angels, nor do we ever become angels. We are “body-soul” and forever will be. Looking ahead to the end of the Creed, it is not for naught that we pray: “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come,” or — as in the Apostle’s Creed — “I believe in … the resurrection of the body.” Keeping our eyes open to the fullness of reality — the fullness of God’s plan for us as a unity of body and soul and meant to live together with him and with all of the angels and saints in a “new heaven and a new earth” (Revelations 21:1) — transforms how we live this life in the here and now.
Joel Padgett serves as Director of the Office of Catechesis for the Diocese of Evansville. Contact him at [email protected].