Credo 20 - ... by the power of the Holy Spirit

It was by the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ our Saviour took flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and through this miraculous event, Mary gave birth to a son and yet remained a virgin always. The power of the Holy Spirit ensured that God could take our nature and unite it to the divine nature in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Annunciation, the very first of the mysteries of the rosary, marks the inauguration of the fullness of time. When Mary becomes pregnant with Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, the time of the fulfilment of the promise of God has arrived. Mary is asked by the angel to conceive the one in whom the whole fullness of deity would become flesh. Mary is unable to understand how she will bear a child when she has ‘known no man’, and she is answered that this event will occur by the power of the Holy Spirit: ‘the Holy Spirit will come upon you’ (Lk 1: 34 – 35).

The Holy Spirit fulfils a role that is intimately dependent on the role of the Son. Later in our reflections on the creed, we will consider the Holy Spirit as ‘the Lord, the giver of life’. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the womb of the Virgin Mary was sanctified, and she conceived the Son of the eternal Father in a humanity that was drawn from her own.

The Father’s only son, the fruit of the Virgin’s womb, is the ‘Christ’, the one anointed by the Holy Spirit since the beginning of time. This fact is made manifest to the human race only gradually from the cradle to the cross, and from the resurrection to the return in glory. Thus, the entire life of Jesus Christ will make manifest ‘how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power (Acts 10:38).

Credo 19 - ... he came down from heaven

The author of the so-called ‘third-Isaiah’ (the third part of the book of Isaiah, composed by a later prophet), when confronted with the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem, prayed to God as follows: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down” (Is. 64:1). The psalmist prayed in a similar way: “Bow your heavens, O Lord, and come down; touch the mountains so that they smoke.” (Ps 144:5).

These prayers of the psalmist and of Isaiah could appear somewhat childish to our modern minds. Is God a magician, who would use his power over the creation to tear open the heavens? With proofs and wonders of such a kind, what room would be left to our freedom? In fact, this coming down from heaven is much more subtle than we might think at first sight. This does not mean to ‘come from one place to another’. God is everywhere and therefore lives in any place. This ‘coming down’ means, figuratively, a way of humbling himself. As we know, this humbling took place in the incarnation. Jesus, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:6-7). In the first chapter of Mark’s gospel, we read that during his baptism, when he came up out of the water, Jesus “saw the heavens opened and the spirit descending upon him like a dove” (Mk 1:10).

Therefore, by an act of love, God humbled himself and came down to us. Begotten from the Father, he came down from heaven and entered into our humanity. The meaning of it is, first and foremost, that Jesus, fully divine, took our humanity. It is not a landing! I mean by this it is more of a taking off for our humanity! As some fathers of the Church like Saint Irenaeus repeatedly said, God took our humanity in order that our humanity might become divine. Coming down from heaven does not mean, of course, that Jesus ceased to be divine in any way. He remains one with God: “the Father is in me and I am in the Father” (John 10:38). Rather, his coming down from heaven implies that if we let Christ reign over our lives, the Kingdom of heaven is among us!

Credo 18 - ... for us men and for our salvation ...

For the first time those reciting the creed are incorporated into its subject matter: the identity and revelation of God in Jesus which we have been recalling in the previous section of the narrative is for us (for all humanity); God, in Jesus, is for life, you might say, not just for Christmas; is for our living out. But in what sense? From what are we saved, and how?

Chesterton once said something to the effect that original sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith. What he meant by this is that we experience a disjunction between where we feel we are and where we could and should be. Rowan Williams has offered a useful metaphor in a recent series of reflections: we are not living in peace by one another’s generosity, in an “economy of gift”. Rather, we tend to turn into ourselves in self-absorption to escape the demands of the other, especially if another’s needs are complex, troubling and put us at a disadvantage. And as for our individual behaviour, so even more in the behaviour of the collective realities, the churches, nations, cultures in which we live. Inasmuch as we are born into a set of dysfunctional relationships, in forming our identities, in learning how to be human, to exist and act as a member of the human community, we inescapably learn destructive behaviours, the turning away from the God of gift to becoming dominated by the idols we have made for our security (wealth, power, market forces) - in Scriptural terms living in a state of slavery and fear.

And it was because humanity had become bogged down in such a morass that something beyond human action was needed to set it right. Or rather, only a human act of fearless love would heal the process of human history, as an example and precept of a new way of living – but humans had become dehumanised, were not human enough to perform it.

Jesus is the human event that brings divine freedom into play in our world. Jesus’ humanity embodies God the Son, embodies the mutual self-giving love of Son and Father. We can speak of him offering a divine gift of unrestricted love to the Father and to the world. And of course the reality of our sinful state, the effects of the self-destructiveness of humans, is shown in how we (collectively, in the religious and political powers of Jesus’ day) received that gift of unrestricted love – we crucified him. In the kind of world we’ve made or collude with this is what the price of unrestricted loving is.

But God had the last word in that particular dialogue, God’s loves for us persists, shown in and through the Resurrection of Jesus, offering us the possibility of being remade in the love of Jesus. According to John, Jesus ‘breathes into his disciples’ his spirit, the breath of his life; and contact with humans who have received the breath of Jesus’ life is contact with Jesus, is to be contemporary with Jesus. In the Spirit we are given the capacity to relate to the God the Father as Jesus did, to continue to be his body in the world.

Salvation then means both liberation from a negative condition (defined in the New Testament primarily in terms of slavery and fear) and the gift of a positive one (defined primarily by a freedom that revealed itself in states, dispositions, attitudes and behaviour). At root, the first Christians claimed the experience of power, which came not from themselves, but from another – God. Three phrases frequently occur in the New Testament speaking of this power – eternal life, expressing the quality of life they have been given, a share in some sense in God’s own life, even as they continue their earthly existence. The second was forgiveness of sins, the removal by God of everything that prevents full reconciliation between God and humans – just as no human can give a share in God’s life so no human can forgive sins – the point of the controversies in the three Synoptic Gospels. The third phrase is the ‘Holy Spirit’, which corresponds to their experience of God’s power, the life-giving presence of the risen Lord. Salvation is not then a rescue or restoration, but an elevation, opening up the possibility of our participating by gift or grace in the divine nature (cf 2 Pet 1:3-4).

And this is (or should be) happening now. It’s an unfortunately common mistake to assume that the action of our salvation refers only to a future condition. Admittedly, this strong sense of salvation as a participation in God’s life depends on or is validated by a strong experience of liberation and power, which might not be especially evident in our local Christian communities. This has never completely disappeared in the church, as the testimony of the saints shows us, but can be blunted or even suppressed in churches more concerned with institutional survival than communicating the living reality of salvation. Are our priorities maintenance rather than mission, security rather than the risk of self-giving?

Walking the Walsingham Way

The summer brings opportunities for a diverse range of pastoral placements for us Dominican students. Last weekend, the Dominican Sisters of St Joseph organised the 'John Paul II Pilgrimage' and I was one of three Dominican friars who went on the pilgrimage. This was the second time the pilgrimage has been held, and it involves a 50-mile walk along most of the medieval pilgrim's route from Ely to Walsingham. Almost 30 young people and religious walked on this pilgrimage, praying for the conversion of England & Wales.

We began on 12 July with Mass at Ely Cathedral. It was a rare privilege to be allowed to celebrate the Mass in St Etheldreda's chapel. We then walked to the Catholic church in Ely where we spent our first night. Some of us actually slept in the church!

The next morning, we went to Brandon and celebrated Mass with the parish. We were treated to a good breakfast and then set off on a 21-mile walk to Swaffham.

As we walked, we prayed the Rosary, a talk reflecting on the meaning of the Pilgrimage was given by Sr Hyacinthe OP and there was opportunity for confession along the way as we had two Dominican priests and a Benedictine monk with us.

Below is a banner made by one of the pilgrims which we carried along the way, followed by assorted photos from the walk through the beautiful Norfolk countryside:

Arriving at Swaffham, many went to soak their feet in water, others dashed for a shower, and some even proceeded to play football! Every night of the pilgrimage, we ended with Benediction and Compline and began the next morning with Lauds (Morning Prayer). In this way, we enveloped our days in the prayer of the Church.

The next day we walked to Helhoughton, pausing for Mass in the magnificent ruins of Castle Acre Priory, the first Cluniac monastery in England. We believe this was only the second time that Mass has been celebrated there since the Reformation. The first time was last year on this same Pilgrimage. Fr Benjamin Earl OP was the pilgrimage chaplain and he celebrated Mass for us each day and preached.

The next day, we walked the final stretch into Walsingham where the bells of the 14th-century Slipper Chapel rang out to welcome us. It was a most joyful sound which mingled with the hymns we sang as we approached the Shrine. We were welcomed by the Shrine Director and joined in the Pilgrim's Mass at 12 noon.


After setting up our tents, we walked the Holy Mile into the village. Some chose to walk barefoot as an act of penance. Benediction followed in the parish church of Walsingham, and then we visited the ruins of the Augustinian priory where Our Lady's Holy House once stood. The heavens opened, but we were fortunately snug in a pub, listening to Dom William Wright OSB talk about the 'Theology of the Body'. That night, we camped in the fields around the Shrine, singing and celebrating late into the night.
The final morning, 16 July, was the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and we ended the pilgrimage with Mass in the intimate space of the Slipper Chapel.

It was a beautiful way to end our 5-day journey together and we were sent out, back to our homes and communities to bring something of the love, joy and peace that we found on the Walsingham Way.

Credo 17 - ... through Him all things were made ...

In the middle of the 2^nd century a Christian theologian called Marcion began to teach that the world was made by a Demiurge, a second god, and that the God and Father of Jesus is not the same God that we read about in the Old Testament. This teaching of Marcion led to a controversy and the Church stood up for its faith in the One God. Marcion’s opinion was rejected by other Christians as not being a part of the faith handed down by the Apostles.

St. Irenaeus wrote at the time:

‘There is one only God, the Creator - He who is above every Principality, and Power, and Dominion, and Virtue: He is Father, He is God, He the Founder, He the Maker, He the Creator, who made those things by Himself, that is, through His Word and His Wisdom - heaven and earth, and the seas, and all things that are in them’ [Adverus Haereses 2, 30, 9].

When we say that ‘through Christ all things were made’ we confess our belief that creation is a work of the One God in Three Persons. Christ who is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit is the same God who created heaven and earth, and who made covenants with the people of Israel. Christ is God’s ‘Word’ and the Spirit is God’s ‘Wisdom’.

Nowadays Christians bear witness to the fact that the world is good in itself - because it was created by God and not by some evil spirits - not only when they care for sisters and brothers but also when they act in an environmentally-minded way. Creation is good and by living responsibly and caring for our environment we bear witness that it was made by the Father, ‘through His Word and His Wisdom’, for the glory of God and to the benefit of all creatures.

‘Through Him all things were made’ reminds us also that we can meet God in all aspects of our lives: not only in short periods of time when we attend church worship. That is to say that the whole of our life is spiritual, whether we pray, work, go out with our friends, even when we sleep.

Credo 16: ... of one being with the Father ...

In the post on Credo 15, we learned something of the history of the Arian controversy and the way in which that debate caused the Church to define in its Creed the nature of the person of Jesus Christ. At the council of Nicaea in 325 the Church, in opposition to Arius, confessed that Jesus is ‘begotten, not made, of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father’. In other words, through the incarnation, divine nature assumes human nature.

What is the significance of this affirmation for Christian faith and life? The reason why the Arian controversy was of such significance for the early church was that it called into question the nature of Christ’s saving act. The Council of Nicea eventually settled on the term homoousios (‘of the same substance’) rather than homoisousios (‘of like substance’). One way of accounting for this choice is to look at what the early church was trying to say about Christ’s redemption of humanity. In this context ‘redemption’ means ‘being taken up into the life of God’. So, if the incarnation has the effect of ‘deifying’ (‘making divine’) human nature then it follows that the flesh must be united with God’s nature. That unity is what occurred in the person of Jesus Christ and it has had the effect of enabling human beings to share in the life of God.

The Church’s conviction that humanity is saved in the body is an essential part of our sacramental faith. The sacrifice that Christ makes of his body and blood on Calvary is truly a gift from God’s own nature. Therefore, whenever the Eucharist is celebrated we do not commemorate a mere scapegoat offered for us, but rather God himself, suffering in the body, in order that the body might be the means by which the world is redeemed.

That God united his nature to human flesh gives the world a whole new way of relating to him. We are reminded that our physical nature is an integral part of our prayer and offering to God. To meditate upon the way in which our nature has been raised up to God enables us to see the face of our redeemer in each of our brothers and sisters.

Credo 15 - ... begotten, not made

In the 4th century, Arius, an eloquent and morally upright priest of the philosophically rich but riven city of Alexandria, drew on the text of Proverbs 8:22-31 to expound his view of God’s absolute uniqueness.

Arianism taught that God was “the only eternal, the only one without beginning… utterly one, a monad”. Notably, Arius said, “there was [a ‘time’], when he [Christ] was not”. The Scriptures appeared to support this, particularly at Proverbs 8:22 when Wisdom – taken to mean Christ the Logos – is said to be created: “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old.” Arianism thus reduced Christ to a created being, albeit the first and greatest, through whom all else, all creatures, were made. Nevertheless, Christ himself was made and hence not divine, nor eternal and uncreated like God. Essentially, Arianism made the Son subordinate to the Father, not truly God by nature or in his very being.

One vital consequence of this denial of Christ’s divinity, as St Athanasius indicated, is that were Christ just a creature, he could not by his Incarnation and redemptive work on the Cross ‘deify’ us. For only One who is God and Son of God by nature can make others gods and sons of God by grace.

In 325, the first ecumenical council was convened at Nicaea to respond to the Arian crisis which was becoming hugely influential. The bishops – reputedly, 318 of them – condemned the Arian position and affirmed that the Son was co-eternal with the Father and “the only-begotten generated from the Father… not made.” Arius had considered this generation of the Son from the Father to be in effect a creation, hence the clear statement that the Son was not made; his generation is not creation.

How then is this ‘generation’ to be understood? The relationship of any father to son is not of maker to creature but the communication of one’s own being and substance. Moreover, in the Trinity, as St Thomas Aquinas explains, the personal being of the Father is fatherhood, such that to be the Father is eternally to be begetting the Son, and to be the Son is eternally to be begotten. Thus, Father and Son are “event-like attributes” intrinsic to God’s very being. If, as Arius thought, there was a time when the Son was not, then there was a time too when God was not Father; this would be impossible, for “begetting and fatherhood belong first to God”. Therefore, as St Gregory of Nyssa taught, “without the Son, the Father has neither existence nor name.”

Hence, even today, one cannot simply replace the language of Father and Son, with e.g. ‘Creator’ and ‘Redeemer’, without doing violence to our Christian belief in who God is.

Credo 14: ... true God from true God ...

Athanasius in his discussion on the incarnation said out of nothing God created man, on them he bestowed his own life by the grace of the Word. However, unfortunately, man turned away from this eternal life to things corruptible under the advice of the devil - that ancient serpent. He, Athanasius, makes clear, though by nature man was subject to death, that is before ever he sinned, by virtue of their union with the Word they were capable of escaping the grip of nature's law, provided they remained innocent. The presence of the Word shielded them from natural corruption. This was how God meant it to be, as Wisdom 2:23 says, 'God created man for incorruption and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death entered into the world'.

From the time man followed the words of the devil he began to waste away. The very reflection of the Word Himself was disappearing. God's work was being undone. God needed to do something. It was not in the nature of God to leave man to perish. To leave man to perish would have been unfitting of God, who is all good. So he had to do something. In the word of a brother of mine it must have been all very exciting, at least, I think so. Any way, God had to do something, and in his infinite wisdom he did. To recreate the now corruptable man, he sent the incorruptable, incorporal, immaterial Word to redeem man. God solved the problem. Oh how great God is. This Word which entered history in flesh and blood was and is God. Hence the reason we say true God from true God.

This Word is Jesus.

Credo 13: ...light from light ...

When we recite the Creed on Sundays and Solemnities, we recall the fundamental tenets of our faith. But the truth that we profess with our lips is of little use unless it is expressed in our daily lives. The Creed states that Jesus is ‘Light from Light’. So how then should this affect the way we live? In the Gospel according to John, Jesus declares: "I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12).

What does this mean, and how are we to respond? In the Gospel, light seems to be synonymous with life: so for Jesus to say that he is light is to say that he is a source of life to those who follow him. To follow Jesus is to walk in the light, to awaken to the reality of our Salvation which was won for us on the cross. Thus the revelation that God is light is an invitation which demands a response – it is an invitation to draw near to Jesus, to be close to him that we might discover what it is to walk in the light. This invitation is beautifully expressed in the painting by William Holman Hunt: Christ, the Light of the world knocks on the door, and stands waiting to be invited in.

It is tempting to contrast light and darkness. But darkness is the absence of light, and it is by light that we see. If we walk without the light, we stumble through life, lacking vision. However, to walk in the light requires that we learn to see Christ’s love and live by it, so that we may be transformed by it. Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus tells us how we are to live in this light, expressed clearly in the new Commandment: “love one another; even as I have loved you” (John 13:34). And this is something that we are called to do right here and right now. The invitation to walk with Christ is always open to us.

But why respond to Jesus? Who is this Jesus who claims to be the light of the world? The teaching that Jesus is ‘Light from Light’ shows us that Jesus is God made man, the one who makes known to us the God who is the source of light. God makes his light known to us through Christ as his gift to us; since he wants nothing more than that we may come into relationship with him, sharing in the Divine life.

Salute no one on the road

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 66:10-14; Psalm65; Galatians 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

Jesus's instruction to his disciples, 'salute no one on the road', seems odd for three reasons. One, it seems rude. Two, it seems unChristian! And three, it seems like a very bad strategy for people who have been sent out to preach.

They are to be single-minded, focused, intent on the mission they have been set. They are not to be distracted from that task even by good things. We see this urgency in the lives of the prophets and as a result many of them are 'odd'. They do not quite fit into the normal patterns of life. There is an urgency in their task and a single-mindedness in their pursuit of it. There are many distractions, even very good ones, from which they must keep themselves free and detached if they are to concentrate on their work. The Word of God has taken possession of them and they do seem possessed at times.

The kingdom of God which is very near is also very odd. It is not just an endorsement of the way things are. If it is about a new life and if it is about a grace coming from God then there will not be a perfect fit between the world and the kingdom. Something new is being announced, something different, something strange, something not heard before.

Jesus's teaching is not then practical in the sense in which the world might want things to be practical. It is not an alternative social, political, philosophical, or economic arrangement although it has implications for all those things. It alerts us to the deepest level there is, the love of God 'deep down things', and invites us to live from there, so giving us a new and unexpected freedom. It is not an alternative way of acting, an alternative way of making community. It raises questions about all acting, about all ways of making community.

The preaching of the gospel is, at its heart, the love of God abroad in the world. So it will be odd and strange, very near (nearer than we can imagine) but troubling, puzzling, new, a matter of grace.

Credo 12 - God from God ...

The Nicene Creed has an essentially Trinitarian structure, based upon the baptismal confession of faith in the one God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The central section of the Creed focuses on the Son, the Lord, Jesus Christ, whom Christians profess to be both truly God – God from God - and truly man. While the first articles of the Creed articulate an understanding of God that might be arrived at from a reading of the Old Testament – God as both Creator of heaven and earth and Father of Israel –in this central section, we move on to what Christians have been able to say about God by reflecting upon the significance of the words and actions of Jesus Christ recorded in the New Testament.

In the Gospel of John, the Pharisee Nicodemus describes Jesus as someone who has “come from God as a teacher” (John 3:2). In his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus deepens this insight by disclosing himself as the son of God sent by the Father as saviour of the world. He tells Nicodemus, “God sent his son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved”. In other words, God the Father, the creator of the world, has such a depth of love for his creation, and in particular for humanity, that he sends his only-begotten son, through whom everything was created, to enter into and become part of the world as a human being so that it might be redeemed from within.

Jesus is thus disclosed in the New Testament as God’s closeness to us. Saint Matthew, in his account of the angel’s announcement to Joseph that a son, called Jesus, was to be born to Mary, quotes the words of the prophet Isaiah to refer to Jesus as Emmanuel or God-with-us. The present Pope once wrote that Jesus is “the real proximity of God coming to meet us, God’s mediation to us, and that precisely because he himself is God as man, in human form and nature, God-with-us (Emmanuel)”.

Older Creed posts

Ordained for Service

Our brothers (l. to r.) Bruno Clifton OP, Alistair Jones OP, Didier Croonenberghs OP, Benedict Jonak OP and Dominic Ryan OP, along with Bishop William Kenney CP, Bishop of Midica & Auxiliary Bishop of Birmingham, who ordained them to the Diaconate on Monday 2 July.

From the Prayer of Consecration for a Deacon -

'Lord, send forth upon them the Holy Spirit, that they may be strengthened by the gift of your sevenfold grace to carry out faithfully the work of the ministry. May they excel in every virtue: in love that is sincere, in concern for the sick and the poor, in unassuming authority, in self-discipline, and in holiness of life. May their conduct exemplify your commandments and lead your people to imitate their purity of life. May they remain strong and steadfast in Christ, giving to the world the witness of a pure conscience. May they in this life imitate your son, who came, not to be served but to serve, and one day reign with him in heaven.'

After the Ordination, there was a reception in the Aula -