2025 Catechesis Supplement

Church’s ancient creed still shapes the lives of Catholics today

Father Daniel Mahan preaches a homily during an April 27, 2023, Mass at St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Church in Aurora. He currently serves as director of the Institute on the Catechism of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. (File photo by Sean Gallagher)

By Sean Gallagher

At each Saturday vigil and Sunday Mass and in every solemnity in the Church’s liturgical year, the faithful profess the creed.

These core Christian beliefs flow from Scripture and the Church’s sacred tradition dating back to the time of the Apostles.

This year, Christian leaders around the world are celebrating the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, held in what is now Turkey in 325. It was the first of a series of Church councils that defined dogmas found in the creed related to the Trinity and Christ’s incarnation. The creed professed at Mass, commonly called the Nicene Creed, is named after that council.

Father Daniel Mahan recently spoke with The Criterion about the creed and how it has shaped the life of faith of Catholics around the world and throughout its history up to the present day. He noted especially how the Church’s ancient creed is explained well for believers today in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Father Mahan is an archdiocesan priest who serves as director of the Institute on the Catechism of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and is author of the award-winning 2024 book, A Journey through the Catechism.

The creed in the catechism

In his interview, Father Mahan, citing an image used by St. John Paul II, described the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a “symphony of faith.”

“In the first movement of a symphony, you hear the themes that are going to play out in the remaining three movements,” Father Mahan said. “Such is the same with the first part of the catechism that follows the outline of the creed. You hear those themes that are going to be echoed and built upon in the remaining part of the catechism.”

To illustrate this concept, Father Mahan focused on how the creed explains the incarnation of Christ, how he, as the Son of God, became fully human, including having a human body.

The second part of the catechism, Father Mahan noted, lays out how the body of Christ is related to the Church’s worship, especially the Eucharist, which he said is “the re-presentation of the perfect sacrifice of his body on the cross that is made present in every offering of the holy Mass, albeit in an unbloody manner.”

The third part of the catechism, focusing on the Church’s moral teachings, applies what the creed says about the body of Christ to how Catholics live out their faith today.

“Our faith in the triune God is not just an intellectual exercise,” Father Mahan said. “Our faith is in the God who becomes flesh, makes his dwelling among us and who teaches us through his physical passion, death and resurrection that our faith in him must be lived out in a multitude of practical ways.”

This teaching, Father Mahan said, helps Catholics to follow the saying of St. Augustine of Hippo, “ ‘to become him whom we receive’ [in Communion] and be able to live out our faith and be Christ’s presence in the world.”

The fourth and final part of the catechism, focusing on prayer, explains in depth the Lord’s Prayer, which is prayed at Mass just before Communion.

Father Mahan noted that the part of that prayer that asks God for “our daily bread” is rendered in its original Greek as “epiousion,” which is translated literally as “super-essential.”

He said that, in this part of the prayer, believers are asking God to “give us not just bread for our table, not just what we need to survive in this life, but give us that super-substantial bread. Give us the bread of life. Give us the body of Christ in the holy Eucharist. That’s what we’re praying for as we prepare for holy Communion.”

The creed in history and today

Father Mahan spoke about the danger Christians faced in the early history of the Church in professing their faith in Christ, a faith that eventually developed into the creed professed today.

The earliest form of the creed, he said, was the Christian claim, in Greek, that Christ was “kyrios” (“Lord”).

“That phrase directly contradicted the claim of Caesar,” Father Mahan said. “Kyrios was the title for Caesar. Caesar is kyrios. But early Christians said that Jesus is kyrios. That was sufficient to land them in jail and have them thrown to the lions. It was very subversive.”

Today, he continued, Christians face pressure of various degrees in professing their faith.

“Being a follower of Jesus is met with the rolling of eyes, at the least, among many,” Father Mahan said. “For some of our brothers and sisters in the Lord in other parts of the world, it means persecution and painful death.”

What Catholics profess in the creed is tied, Father Mahan said, to how they live from day to day.

“We see the connection between faith and life and the importance of keeping our faith, living our faith come what may,” he said. “It’s the blood of the martyrs that has been the seed of the Church and, in many ways, has contributed to the solidity, the rock-solid foundation of our faith.”

Despite the challenges today to living the faith fully and consistently, Father Mahan said that Catholics can find hope in the same Holy Spirit that led the Church 1,700 years ago to begin to set forth its creed.

“There is always hope with the Holy Spirit being the breath of God to this day, just as the Holy Spirit was the driving wind on the day of Pentecost,” he said. “The Holy Spirit continues to be the breath of God that animates the life of the Church and gives us reason for hope in these troubled times of ours … .” †