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).
“I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” (“The Mystery of the Church” cf. CCC 772-786).
The bond of friendship is special. We all have those friends that we don’t see for months or even years, but when we are together, it’s like no time has passed. Those friends who just understand us or love our family like their own.
As I was reading through this section of the catechism, one specific friend of mine constantly kept coming to my mind. I met my friend at Mass when we were in college. She and I were fast friends; friends that to this day may not talk every day or see each other often, but when we do, it is like time has never passed and our friendship picks up right where it left off.
After college, I was living in Tennessee, and one weekend, my friend and her boyfriend wanted to meet up for breakfast while they were in Nashville. At breakfast, her boyfriend shared something that changed my life. He told me he loved my friend — more than just a romantic love, there was something deeper he loved about her. He saw something in her that he wanted for himself. Prior to our breakfast, he had asked her where her joy, zeal and enthusiasm for life came from. My friend, without second thought, explained that Jesus and her Catholic faith give her all she needs.
Her very life and her testimony were so attractive that he told her, “I want what you have.”
The Catholic Church is more than just a denomination; it is the Church instituted by Christ and willed by God the Father. God’s plan for the Church is to “unite all things in him.” In paragraph 775 of the Catechism, we read, “The Church’s first purpose is to be the sacrament of the inner union of men with God … the Church is also the sacrament of the unity of the human race.”
For God, the Church is a sign and instrument of all things yet to come and a visible plan of his love for humanity. As Catholics, we are given grace through the sacraments; for the world, the Church is the sacrament of salvation.
As a Church community, we celebrate and feel the excitement for young children when they receive their first Holy Communion, when a couple gets married or when a young man is ordained a priest. With grace flowing, the sacraments are both wonderful and mysterious. The wonder and amazement we see in our lives through the sacraments is what the Catholic Church is to the world. As members of the Church, we form the Body of Christ, and we are a part of God’s plan for salvation. We are a part of the sacrament of salvation; we are a part of God’s visible plan of love for all of humanity. And that is something to be excited about!
Every soul is created to be a part of the Body of Christ. Through our baptism, we each become a new creation; we become a member of God’s chosen people. We are part of the Body of Christ, with Jesus as the head. We participate in the three offices of Christ, to be priest, prophet and king. We are God’s own people, and with that, through Christ, we may all form one family and one People of God.” (CCC 783-786, 803-804)
As his chosen people, our duty, responsibility and mission is to be the salt of the earth and a light to the world (Matthew 5:13-16). We must take the Gospel to all nations — that includes our homes, our families, our parishes, our communities and every encounter we have with others.
I mentioned that my friend’s now-husband’s testimony changed my life — he also changed my perspective on my duty and responsibility as a baptized member of the Body of Christ. My friend’s witness of faith and her personal testimony to him are an example of what God wants for all of us — a living and loving relationship with him, Our Father, and to then share that with the world! My friend’s husband joyfully came into the Catholic Church a couple of years after they met, and he is happy to now have what he saw radiating through her.