What Are You Looking For? Part 1: The Nicene Creed

I Believe

I Believe

          The first time we looked at the phrase, “I believe”, we looked at the necessity to believe.  We also looked at the fact that the need to believe has been put into the heart of every person.  Which raises the question, how do we come to believe?

          In the Catholic Church, we go to the Deposit of Faith, which consists of two parts.  The first is Sacred Scripture.  The Bible.  In the Old Testament God gradually reveals himself to mankind through his covenants, the greatest of which was made with Moses and the Israelites.  If the Israelites followed him faithfully, he would bless them among the nations.  Sometimes they did.  Sometimes not so much.  But even when they were faithless, God still reached out to them in love.

          In the New Testament, in the Gospels, we have the fulfillment of all of the covenants in Jesus.  “In keeping with the Lord’s command, the Gospel was handed on in two ways: - in writing ‘by those apostles and other men associated with the apostles who, under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit, committed the message of salvation to writing.’

- orally ‘by the apostles who handed on, by the spoken word of their preaching, by the example they gave, by the institutions they established, what they themselves had received - whether from the lips of Christ, from his way of life and his works, or whether they had learned it at the prompting of the Holy Spirit.’” CCC paragraph 7

           Now some might say all we need is the Bible, but as St. John wrote, “There are many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.” (John 21:25 NABRE)  And St. Paul exhorts the Philippians to “Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me.”  (Philippians 4:9 NABRE)  We also have to remember that the oral tradition was all that existed in the early church. 

          So how does all of this draw us into belief?  It draws us because Sacred Scripture is the very word of God and reveals God.  The more we study it, the deeper our belief.  And Sacred Tradition draws us to belief because it is the unbroken line of consistent teaching of the Church.  Those teachings of the Church that make up Sacred Tradition are the same as they were at the time of the apostles.  They haven’t changed in over two thousand years.