The Creed is the faith that we confess at every Mass, and it is therefore a summary of what we believe, the truths we hold as such – truths. These truths not only identify what we believe in, but also who we are. They form our Catholic identity.
On the road towards the Year Of Faith, I want to take a look at the Nicene Creed, line by line, to see what it tells us about the truth of being Catholic Christians.
Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible
Continuing from the first lines of the Nicene Creed, we further develop the identification of who God is. He is a creating God and His creation envelops everything we know and also the things we do not know.
God stands at the root of everything, but He is not a part of it. The creator is not part of creation, but nonetheless willed it into being. Creation – everything we see, from lifeless matter to our loved ones was willed, desired by God. This is also an essential element of our relationship with God. We are not an accident, we have a purpose, a reason for being. That reason is that we are wanted, we are loved even.
This knowledge is, in many ways, far more important than the exact details of how God went about creating everything. We will most certainly never know all the details of the process of creation, although the sciences can surely teach us much about it. But it suffices to know what the reason behind the process is.
God is the maker of all things, reaching far beyond or knowledge and abilities, but He has chosen to want and love us and everything around us.
Art credit: ‘The Ancient of Days’, by William Blake (1794)
In Caelo et in Terra 