Credo

This year marks the 1700th anniversary of the first ecumenical council, the First Council of Nicaea, convened by the Emperor Constantine in 325. Nicaea I completed its work on this date, June 19, 325 (by which date only two bishops present still supported the error of Arius). Thus, today is also the anniversary of the early version of the Nicene Creed. (The Creed we actually recite today is the Nicene Creed amplified and adopted by the second ecumenical council, the First Council of Constantinople in 381, officially known as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed).

In the dark ages of the 1890s, it was fashionable in some settings to omit the Nicene Creed from Mass, taking to an extreme the mistake the liturgical movement of the 20th century had made in reducing the occasions on which the Creed was said or sung at Mass. In contrast, the Eastern Churches include the Creed at every Mass. In my experience, the Anglicans do so as well. They certainly include it at funerals, which is very edifying and catechetically powerful. Reciting the creed at Catholic funerals would certainly be a marked improvement in our theologically impoverished funeral liturgy.

My seminary rector used to refer to the Creed as one of the "monuments of the faith." It is indeed a liturgical text to be treasured and prayed. Personally, I prefer it sung, and I can still chant it to the tune I remember hearing in church every Sunday when I was a teenager, although I recognize that that is a desire unlikely to be realized in most contemporary congregations, obsessed as American liturgy increasingly seems to be by a preoccupation with brevity (except, perhaps, when it comes to "Prayers of the Faithful" and end-of-Mass "Announcements"). Chanting the Creed corrects what seems to be an otherwise universal tendency to rush through the Creed's recitation, different members of the congregation saying it a different speeds!

The adoption of the Nicene Creed commenced a new period in Christian doctrinal development, a complex conciliar process of doctrinal development and definition, which - beyond merely condemning Arianism and subsequent errors - gave the Church a well expressed alternative description of the relationship of Father and Son both in the inner life of the Blessed Trinity and in the economy of salvation, and highlighting the direct connection between the Father's eternal begetting of the Son and Son's incarnation in time for our benefit.

Image: An icon depicting the Emperior Constantine, accompanied by the Bishops of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325), holding the text Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed completed at the secodn ecumenical Council, the First Council of Constantinople in 381