NARRAGANSETT—There’s nothing like a glass of wine and good company on a cold winter’s evening–even if it is on a Monday.
About 50 people braved the chilly weather on January 27 for “Wine & Cheese & the Nicene Creed” at St. Thomas More Church in Narragansett.
“The Nicene Creed is like the Pledge of Allegiance,” said the church’s pastor, Father Marcel Taillon. Because it’s repeated so frequently, “nobody really knows what they’re saying.”
Father Taillon arranged the event to “make people curious about the Creed,” he said, with the hope that an exploration of this statement of faith would deepen parishioners’ experience of Sunday Mass.
While attendees enjoyed plates of cheese and crackers accompanied by wine, soda, or water, Father Taillon provided a broad overview of the Creed’s history, purpose, and theology. The heart of the Creed, he said, was the affirmation that Christ is both human and divine, which is “the central mystery of our faith.”
The 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope declared by Pope Francis shares the 1,700th anniversary of the promulgation of the Nicene Creed at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. The council produced the Creed in response to the claims of Arius, a priest of Alexandria in Egypt, that Christ was solely human – a created being with no divine nature. This not only denies the divinity of Christ but dismantles the Holy Trinity. The belief is so associated with Arius that it became known as Arianism.
Church councils convene when there is a problem to address, said Father Taillon. In 325, “Arius was the problem.”
Arius was such a problem that his ideas about Christ spread rapidly and became a threat to the unity of the empire. The division led Constantine to call the bishops to meet at Nicaea in order to dogmatically teach the truth about the divinity of Christ.
The bishops declared Arius’ teachings heretical and emerged with an early version of the statement of belief now known as the Nicene Creed.
That Creed was more fully enriched in 381 A.D. at the First Council of Constantinople, which is what we pray at Mass today: the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, also called the Symbol of Faith.
Father Taillon taught that the Nicene Creed is tied to baptism, which makes the recipient an “adopted son or daughter into the Trinitarian life.”
Each time the faithful bless themselves with holy water on entering a church, he said, they remember their baptismal promises, including an expression of belief in the Holy Trinity and in Christ’s promise of eternal life.
In fact, the Creed functions as a standard for the whole Christian life.
“If you’re going to join an organization, look up their mission statement,” Father Taillon said. “Does it align with ours? There are a lot of creeds out there.”
For more information on the 2025 Jubilee Year of Mercy and related events around the diocese, visit https://provd.io/jubilee.
