Tag: The Creed

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Church Teaching

The Creed: I believe in the Holy Spirit

Father Harrison Ayre

June 21, 2023 10:17 am June 21, 2023

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The Holy Spirit is called “the Lord and the Giver of Life” in the Creed. By assigning him the title “Lord,” he is given the same honor and glory as…

The Holy Spirit is called “the Lord and the Giver of Life” in the Creed. By assigning him the title “Lord,” he is given the same honor and glory as the Father and the Son. In fact, the Creed goes on to say that he is “adored and glorified” with the Son and the Father. Thus, the Holy Spirit has the fullness of the one divine essence. Since we only worship God, the Creed makes clear that the Holy Spirit receives the same worship due to the Father and the Son.

He is given the title “Giver of Life” as his role is always to bring life. The Holy Spirit is the one who is breathed into the dust of the earth to create man and hovers over the waters at the beginning of creation. By bringing life, the Holy Spirit brings God’s life in touch with God’s creation. Most definitively he overshadows the Virgin Mary to help bring about the incarnation of Jesus Christ. We see yet again these actions of God drawing his creation into relationship with him.

One special way the Holy Spirit draws creation into a relationship with God is his inspiration through the prophets. This phrase in the Creed feels almost tacked on. After focusing on the glories of his role in God’s plan, we hear and almost miss this fact that he inspires. This inspiration of the prophets is to look forward to the coming of the Son and, more broadly, he inspires the Scriptures through which we read about Jesus, both the foretelling of his coming in the Old Testament and his life and ministry in the New. By inspiring the Bible, the Holy Spirit is always vivifies and makes it an encounter with the Word of God, who is the Son. Thereby he draws us more deeply into communion with God.

Father Harrison Ayre is a priest of the Diocese of Victoria, British Columbia. Follow him on Twitter at @FrHarrison. Read the series of articles on The Creed here.

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Church Teaching

The Creed: I Believe

Father Harrison Ayre

March 21, 2023 9:56 am March 21, 2023

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The start of the Creed we profess at Mass is not simply the expression of my “I,” but rather it is the “I” of the Church. To proclaim the Creed…

The start of the Creed we profess at Mass is not simply the expression of my “I,” but rather it is the “I” of the Church. To proclaim the Creed is to say “I hold to the faith that Christ has given to his Church.” This statement of belief becomes personal that expresses I hold to something greater than myself … “I hold to the deposit of faith Jesus has given to the whole Church.”

To believe is not simply to hold to something irrationally, but it is to exclaim that I hold to a truth that is reasonable, though not knowable to reason alone. To make the faith of the Church our own, we are saying, “This is the deepest reality, the deepest truth of my life. It is not something I simply say at Mass, it is the cornerstone of my very existence.”

The first object of our faith, the deepest ground of our existence, is stated first in the Creed: that we “believe in One God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.” The Creed doesn’t simply stop at “one God” but already begins its reflection that God is a Trinity. The maker of heaven and earth is not some impersonal force, but rather a Person — a Father who creates out of tender love and care. The Father, then, is someone who enters into relationship with every aspect of our being. As creator, every moment is upheld by him, and we are always one small act away from entering into a relationship with him, borne out of thanksgiving for the goodness of his creation.

To believe is to act on the deepest and most important fact of our lives: that we are in relationship with the God who loves and cares for us in the totality of our existence.

Father Harrison Ayre is a priest of the Diocese of Victoria, British Columbia. Follow him on Twitter at @FrHarrison.

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Church Teaching

The Creed: Resurrection of the Dead and Life of the World to Come

Father Harrison Ayre

February 18, 2023 5:00 am February 18, 2023

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The Creed concludes with what we hope but have not yet achieved: eternal life. While “resurrection” speaks of only one thing — the dead coming to new life, of the…

The Creed concludes with what we hope but have not yet achieved: eternal life. While “resurrection” speaks of only one thing — the dead coming to new life, of the body becoming incorruptible — reference to “the world” speaks to the new creation.

The Creed ends this way because, to an extent, we can say that heaven is not the goal. Heaven, when it comes to completion, will be a unity of heaven and earth.

The resurrection of the body means that we will be reunited to our bodies when Christ comes again. Just as Christ is risen in a body that now no longer suffers or is corruptible, so too we will also share in this glory with our own bodies. It is also a strong affirmation that our bodies are not only good, but they are gifts to us from God out of love for us. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.

The new world that God brings about is the heavenly Jerusalem. Peace reigns, it is the time when the lion lays down with the lamb, and swords are beaten into plowshares. It is a time of the triumph of God’s love over sin and death, where God definitively brings about his final plan for his creation. God will not let what he has created go to waste or be destroyed. Our God is a God of life, and at the end of time, he will lift up all creation back into relationship with him, where all creation will enter into a real communion with Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Father Harrison Ayre is a priest of the Diocese of Victoria, British Columbia. Follow him on Twitter at @FrHarrison. Read the series of articles on The Creed here

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Church Teaching

The Creed (Part 2): Jesus Christ, Only Begotten and Consubstantial

Father Harrison Ayre

January 12, 2023 1:56 pm January 12, 2023

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In speaking of Christ, the Creed uses two words that we are not used to: “begotten” and “consubstantial.” Although unfamiliar, these terms can help us appreciate who Jesus is. The…

In speaking of Christ, the Creed uses two words that we are not used to: “begotten” and “consubstantial.” Although unfamiliar, these terms can help us appreciate who Jesus is.

The Father eternally begets the Son, which means that for all eternity the Father gives his being to the Son. To put it differently, there is never a “moment” in which the Son doesn’t exist. He is not created, but eternally comes from the Father. The relationship that God has with his creation, therefore, is rooted more firmly and eternally in his relationship with his Son. This reveals to us that God is an eternal relationship. The Father exists for the Son, and the Son for the Father, through the bond of the Holy Spirit. Thus when God creates, all creation is rooted in this relationship of God.

The fact that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father is confirmed by the term “consubstantial.” The word “con” is rooted in the Latin for “with,” and substance refers to what makes up an entity. Consubstantial, as used in the Creed, refers to the Son as “with the same substance” of the Father. Substance is the very being of God. Whatever is of God is completely and totally in the Son as it is in the Father and the Holy Spirit.

This Son of the Father is the one who takes on human flesh so that he may come to rescue humanity from the bonds of sin and death. He takes on a humanity that is totally ours from his mother Mary. By entering into the world, the Son comes to repair what is broken, namely, that relationship with the Father. He comes to lift up creation once again into proper relationship with God, but this time with something new: to have by adoption what he has by nature: to share the substance, the very life of God.

Father Harrison Ayre is a priest of the Diocese of Victoria, British Columbia. Follow him on Twitter at @FrHarrison. Read part one in the series here.

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