By Jenny Koch
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).
I’ll never forget telling my young children “use your words” as they struggled to communicate as toddlers. Over time, my advice to them has evolved. We have days when anger and frustration lead to the phrase — “Use your words wisely.” I have also caught myself repeating a classic from my childhood — “Say what you mean and mean what you say” — especially as decisions are being made. Just last week, my 10-year-old challenged me on the necessity of some household chores, and I told him that he was “justifying” his actions. His response? “Gosh, Mom. There you go again, using big words again!” I spent a few minutes talking about justification and the conversation continued in multiple directions. It’s a complex, multi-faceted word. Later that evening, I was helping my 12-year-old study new vocabulary words, and he, too, was using justice in unique ways. His homework involved creating sentences about justice, and the examples included calls at basketball games, arguments with his little sister and historical criminal court cases.
Throughout the scriptures and traditions of the Church, God is described in multiple ways. Bishop Barron says, “There are a number of positive things that we can say about God; he is one, simple, perfect, good, personal, intelligent and loving.” We can also speak of God as infinite, immaterial, immutable or unchanging. Paul Tillich used a German word — Uberzeitlichkeit — to infer that God is sort of standing above or outside of time. Scattered throughout the Bible, the God of Israel is not able to be grasped. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). God is also impossible to hide from: “If I ascent to heaven, you are there … If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me” (Psalm 139).
When the early church fathers were creating the Nicene Creed, they used only one attribute — almighty. It is simple and complex. God the Father is Almighty. Like other multi-faceted words, whether you are helping your grade school children with English Language Arts or studying philosophy in the seminary, I think that the word almighty could take us a lifetime to unpack. It means omnipotence, implies everlasting love and power and assures us that God is truly the creator and Lord of the Universe. This has all kinds of implications for morality, answering the timeless questions of “Who are we?” and “Where did we come from?” In many ways, the word Almighty says it all.
Yet the mystery remains. Why such suffering, God? How can you NOT prevent wars and wildfires? In the Catechism, we also hear, “Only faith can embrace the mysterious ways of God’s almighty power” (CCC 273). We are also told, “We believe that his might is universal, for God who created everything also rules everything and can do everything. God’s power is loving, for he is our Father, and mysterious, for only faith can discern it when it “is made perfect in weakness” (CCC 268). Made perfect in weakness? How can this be? Shouldn’t I be strong and confident, all-knowing and mighty to serve an almighty God? The Catechism instructs the opposite. Faith in an Almighty God is embracing the mystery of salvation and knowing that “with God, nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37). We can’t do it alone. Humility is sometimes called the queen of the virtues. When pondering the lone attribute of God — Almighty — humility is also a necessity. God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven of earth is both incapable of being grasped and impossible to escape. I’ll be praying for you as you continue, in faith and humility, to unpack this multi-faceted attribute of God.
Jenny Koch is a local publisher at Decided Excellence Catholic Media. Her family attends Corpus Christi Parish in Evansville.