Homily for 29 th Sunday of OT, Year C: Part VI: Creed and Prayers of the Faithful With the homily complete, the priest invites the congregation to recite either the Nicene or Apostles Creed. To recite the Creed is to recognize all that Christ has come to teach us, and expresses our response and assent to what we have just heard in the readings and in the homily. In the Liturgy of the Word, Jesus Christ, the Word of God, has become incarnate and spoken to man. In the upcoming Liturgy of the Eucharist, Christ will come to offer Himself upon the altar. The Creed then becomes a wonderful link between these two parts of the Mass. The Nicene and Apostles Creeds were not originally composed to be inserted into the Holy Mass. From the start of Christianity, some profession of faith was required into order to be baptized and become part of the People of God. Think of the Ethiopian eunuch in the Acts of the Apostles who told St. Philip prior to his baptism, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. His words show an important aspect of the Creed, that I believe! To recite the Creed is to say that I believe what the Church believes, not my only personal thoughts and opinions about our Faith, but my faith is rooted in the faith of the People of God, The Church.
In later centuries, creeds became precise formulas that were used to combat heresy that threatened the foundations of Christian belief. The Nicene and Apostles Creeds are two such examples, both composed in the 4 th century AD to counter the heretical ideas of the priest Arius, whose subtle yet compelling theological writings began to convince many Christians that Jesus Christ was not God nor one of the divine persons of the Most Holy Trinity. For the majority of the liturgical year, the Nicene Creed is proclaimed during Mass, while during Lent and Easter the Apostles Creed is recited, since it was a formula catechumens would learn for their entrance into the Church at their baptism during the Easter Vigil. Both Creeds affirm our faith in the Most Holy Trinity. They speak of God the Father, as the creator, of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and savior of humanity, and of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of Life. The Nicene Creed also notes the four marks of the Church: That she is the One, True, Church of Christ and not just one church among many, that she is Holy, not exclusively on account of her members, who are
sinners, but because she embodies the holiness of her head, Jesus Christ, that she is Catholic, that is universal and present in nations the world over and Apostolic, since her successors in the Pope and college of bishops receive their authority in an unbroken line of succession from the 12 apostles. One line in the Apostles Creed that has a tendency to cause some distress among the faithful is when we speak of Christ s descent into hell. We must understand this article of our faith in the light of the biblical understanding of the underworld that saw the dead as dwelling beneath the earth in two regions: Gehenna and Sheol. Gehenna was also an actual place outside the city of Jerusalem. It was a valley where the Jewish people once sacrificed their children to pagan gods and so was seen as cursed and the haunt of demons. It was there they burnt the city s garbage and where condemned criminals were left for scavengers or burnt within the landfill. The name Gehenna was also used to describe that region of the underworld where unrepentant sinners and violators of God s laws were assigned to everlasting torment.
Sheol, on the other hand, was the region of the underworld where souls were assigned to dwell who had died in the friendship of God, those men and women who sought to uphold His law and lived righteous lives. It was neither a paradise nor a place of torment, but rather seen as a shadowy existence where you did not suffer but also no longer had a relationship with the Living God. Sheol was the realm that righteous men and women of the Old Testament, like Adam, Eve, Abraham, Ruth, King David, Queen Esther and countless others dwelt and awaited for the coming of Jesus Christ to bring them to heaven. When our Lord died on the Cross, we profess that His soul descended into hell. What we are saying is He descended into Sheol to bring all righteous men and women who awaited His descent into the realm of the dead to bring them to the kingdom of the Heavenly Father. Our Church continues to believe in this spiritual realm once known as Sheol, though we now call in Purgatory, that spiritual realm where souls who die in the friendship of Christ, but still have the remains and consequences of their sins upon their souls, are purified of their attachments to sin and made ready for eternal life in heaven. All those in
Purgatory will eventually go to heaven and none will ever descend into hell; for Purgatory is a place of unfathomable mercy where God prepares those who loved Him in this life to reign with Him in heaven, totally free of any stain or attachment to sin. One practical note about the recitation of the Nicene and Apostles Creeds is to be aware that there is one moment during our recitation that the Church asks us to all bow our bodies as a sign of adoration. This occurs in the Nicene Creed when we pray and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man and during the Apostles Creed when we pray who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. Once the Creed is recited, we begin the General Intercessions or Prayers of the Faithful. The earliest example of these prayers is found in the Good Friday liturgy of the 4 th century AD. For centuries, these prayers were not recited during the Mass and have only in the past 50 years become a mandatory part of the Sunday Mass.
In these prayers, we recognize our need to pray for the needs of the Church and the world. After the priest introduces the petitions, as a general rule, this is the sequence that is followed for these prayers: 1) For the needs of the Church: For the Pope, bishops, clergy, for missionaries, the unity of Christians, more vocations, etc. 2) For public authorities and the salvation of the world: For peace among nations, for just rulers, end to war, social justice, etc. 3) For those oppressed and in need: the poor, the persecuted, the sick, broken families, the unemployed, the imprisoned, unbelievers, etc. 4) For the local community: Including the needs of a local parish, the destitute, fallen away Catholics, for families, newlyweds, etc. 5) For the dead: we recall the dead and pray for their purification in purgatory, in addition to praying for their families who mourn. The Prayers of the Faithful conclude with the priest offering a prayer that God will accept these petitions and answer them according to His most Holy Will. These Prayers should serve as motivation to take what we pray for and look for how each of us, in the vocation that God has given us, will respond to those who require our service and prayer.