By Nicholas Soellner
Connecting Creed and Life
Editor’s Note: For 2025, the Office of Catechesis’ weekly Connecting Faith and Life column will be renamed Connecting Creed and Life. As a way of celebrating the 2025 Jubilee Year and the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the focus of Connecting Creed and Life will consist of reflections on the Nicene Creed that seek to relate aspects of the Creed to daily living.
Maybe it’s just me getting older. New Year’s used to mean staying up to watch the ball drop on TV with the crowd in New York City’s Times Square in their countdown to ring in the New Year. I recently saw a side-by-side picture of last year’s ball drop and one from 20-30 years ago. Back then, there were goofy sunglasses with frames that matched the coming year and gaudy outfits, people in crowds sharing merriment and partying with strangers. Now? A sea of arms raised, illuminated by cell phone screens recording the moment. New Year’s resolutions, once synonymous with the turn of the year, seem so old-fashioned, especially in a culture that seems to have embraced a mindset of “just getting by.” The call to be counter-cultural as Catholics is growing increasingly louder.
Back in the 1900s, the Catholic Church began a call for a “ressourcement” or “return to the sources” so that a global church that had seemed to have lost its way might once again find itself anew in its original teachings of the apostles and their successors. While it has, in some ways, taken longer than expected, this movement has visibly revitalized the Church. Just as God is, the Church is chiefly concerned with the salvation of souls, but also with human thriving! If we wish to reclaim that which was good in life as we lived it before, we too ought to look to the “first things” of the Christian life.
At every Mass, the very first thing we say in the Nicene Creed that we believe in is “God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” The Father is the first in the Creed, and Creation is the second, which mirrors Jesus’ priorities (His relationship to God the Father first, and then to us) which stands as the ideal priorities of the Christian seeking to imitate Christ. This is why Jesus tells us to “seek first his kingdom” as not only the solution to earthly anxieties (cf. Matthew 6:25-34) but also, as St. Paul writes, the means to access the peace of God, which the world cannot give (cf. Philippians 4:6-7, John 14:27). We all wish for peace and confidence that life will go smoothly if we trust God and his promises. However, this can be exceedingly hard at times, though in the face of frequent suffering. But as they say, when things are hard and you feel stuck, go back to the basics.
Let me return to the very first words we say in the Creed: “I believe.” What does it mean to believe? At the risk of oversimplifying a difficult concept, I would say, “To believe means allowing what you trust to be true to change how you make choices, behave, and act.” So what does it mean to believe in God? Putting God first, as the First Commandment demands (cf. Exodus 20:1-3). Allowing our belief to change us requires a series of choices, as it is not only God that constantly seeks our attention. This is why the Second Commandment prohibits making images of idols and why the Third Commandment asks us to sacrifice our time to imitate God in rest (cf. Exodus 20:4-5). Every “yes” to God, has a corresponding “no” to something else. And every “no” to God is a “yes” to something else in his place.
St. Paul says this of authentic discipleship: “… present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God —what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:1-2). More simply, as John Paul II taught in his Theology of the Body, when we understand the concept that “you are your body,” we realize that what we do with our body matters. When we integrate God’s teachings into our bodily actions, we are keeping God first.
Go ahead and make a resolution to be a better disciple this year. In 2025, many will probably say practicing a religion in everyday things is old-fashioned. If that’s the case, here’s to being old-fashioned.
Nicholas Soellner is program manager for the Diocese of Evansville Office of Catechesis.