By Brea Cannon
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).
“Conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary” (CCC 484-489; 490-494; 495-501; 502-511)
In the 14th and 15th centuries in Italy, an art movement began that would ultimately usher in the Renaissance Era to give us masters like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. The Proto-Renaissance art in Europe uniquely began to form sacred art that more than just elevated hearts and minds to the heavens, it told a story and related the sacred to humanity.
One particular Proto-Renaissance fresco that tells a profound story is Fra Angelico’s “The Annunciation.” In this altar piece, the angel Gabriel appears to Mary under a portico, with a dove representing the Holy Spirit above her head; there is a side image of Adam and Eve leaving the garden after the fall. Five additional panels under the central image depict the life of Mary; her birth, wedding with St. Joseph, visit to Elizabeth, birth of Christ, the Presentation and her dormition. This piece of art fascinates as it tells the story of Mary in cooperation with the Holy Spirit with various events in her life, and the conception and life of our Lord.
Paragraph 487 in the Catechism states, “What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ.”
As Angelico gives us the visual of Adam and Eve being led out of the garden, he gives us the hope that is in Mary’s fiat. Throughout the Old Testament, despite Eve’s disobedience, holy women prepared for that of Mary (CCC 489). Eve was given the promise of posterity and through the generations holy women — Hannah, Ruth, Judith, Ester — lead with virtue to form a path to the Mother of the Living, Mary.
There is one very unique distinction that separates Mary from the women of the Old Testament: her immaculate conception. Redeemed from the moment of her conception, in 1854 Pope Pius IX declared Mary’s Immaculate Conception dogma in the Church. It was by a singular grace and privilege that Mary was, from the moment of her conception, preserved immune from all stain of original sin (CCC 491). In the fresco, Mary’s Immaculate Conception and divine motherhood are depicted with Elizabeth’s greeting to her, “the mother of my Lord.”
Angelico continues his story with the nativity of our Lord and Mary’s espousal to Joseph. It is through the Holy Spirit that Mary conceived of a man who in the flesh was fully man but was truly the eternal Son, the second person of the Trinity (CCC 495). It was St. Ignatius of Antioch who explained in the “ever-virgin” state of Mary and her betrothal to Joseph, of the decedents of David, the Church sees the divine promise given through the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,” (CCC 496-497)
“Mary ‘remained a virgin in conceiving her Son, a virgin in giving birth to him, a virgin in carrying him, a virgin in nursing him at her breast, always a virgin’ (St. Augustine, Serm. 186, 1: PL 38, 999): with her whole being she is ‘the handmaid of the Lord’ (Luke 1:38) (CCC 510).” From conception until her dormition and grand entrance into heaven, Mary remained steadfast and humble in faith. From the beginning of time, Mary was chosen above all other women to be the New Eve to the New Adam, the Son of the Living God.
The Proto-Renaissance artist Fra Angelico was beatified by Pope St. John Paul II in 1982, and in 1984 he was declared the patron saint of artists. His art not only lifts our hearts to heaven and unites beauty to sacred spaces, it strokes our human senses and gives us a glimpse of the greatest story ever unfolding.
What we believe in the Nicene Creed about Mary’s fiat and Jesus’ conception fulfill prophecy and give us hope and faith that God keeps his promises. This May, the month of Our Lady, spend some time with Jesus and his mother to recall the promises fulfilled with their lives.