By Brea Cannon
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.
The Creed and Life — as we dive into this new year, I find it so important to start the year with a reminder of our gift of faith and the promise of eternal life. We all just experienced a time of awaiting the Emmanuel and of joy as we welcomed our savior and now we enter into an ordinary time as we are filled with the hope of what is to come for the redemption of the world.
With young children in my home, the holidays are always a time filled with wonder, awe and so much excitement. This year, my three-year-old son kind of experienced Advent and Christmas for the first time. His memory could not recollect the season last year so everything was new to him. From decorating the Christmas tree, to baking cookies with my mom, to playing with a nativity set, he soaked up every moment of the season.
Like all young children, as we journeyed through Advent and the amazing feast days given to us for this season, my son started to hear murmurs and sights of Santa Claus and presents. His three-year-old imagination began to fly with each twinkly Santa display he saw in a store or in our small town’s light display. Despite all of the Christmas displays around him, if you asked him what Christmas is really about, he would stand proud and tell you it is about the birth of baby Jesus.
From our church’s family Christmas movie night to the feast day of St. Nicholas to the traditions of Advent, our Church both universal and domestic give us great hope of seeking truth in our “find your own truth” kind of world. Without each other and without sacred scripture and tradition it would be very difficult to have faith and believe what we are created to desire; that is God’s love and eternal life.
At Christmas we turn to the Mass readings of sacred scripture and the traditions of Advent, the Jessie Tree and even the O’Antiphons as our spiritual treasures to give us a guide in a time and season where it would be very easy to be sucked into the culture of Christmas. As the Church, it is our responsibility to share the Good News and to give hope to a world in darkness — for we have all seen the great light. It did strike me that even at age three what one person believes can be spoken on behalf of the universal Church.
Much like the events of Christmas have a solid scriptural history, the core beliefs we have as Catholics have a solid history too. Since the time of the apostles, the Church has had a set of core beliefs that we know to be true. The Church refers to this profession of faith as a creed. A creed is a common summary of our faith that we all share. A creed, credo in Latin, means “I believe.”
“Whoever says ‘I believe’ says ‘I pledge myself to what we believe’” (CCC185).
The life of the Church is particularly occupied by two creeds. Dating back to the apostles, “the Apostles Creed is so called because it is rightly considered to be a faithful summary of the apostles’ faith” (CCC 194). This creed was the foundation of what the apostles proclaimed to be Truth.
At the Council of Nicaea in year 325, the Apostles Creed was expanded upon and made more explicit and detailed. At that time, heresy was being spread and a detailed creed was professed to more specifically summarize the faith that we believe.
Much like the nativity story in the Gospel of Luke gives us a reliable account of the first Christmas, the creeds give us a set of common beliefs as Catholics that we know to be true. The creed can serve as our compass or guidepost to help each of us articulate and state what we believe. The creed is our profession every day, our core beliefs that are unwavering in a world where truth is relative. As we enter into this new year, I hope you will take some time to read and discover the treasure that the Church has given us to profess what we believe.
Brea Cannon is a Diocese of Evansville native and member of St. Peter Parish in Montgomery with her husband, three children and extended family.