'Cause I Gotta Have Faith - Part III

Keepin’ it moving, we’re continuing our explanation of the Nicene Creed, or “Profession of Faith” as we call it during Mass, by diving into the second Article of Faith.  The next time you go to Mass (if you’re a regular Mass-goer, that is), it’ll sound a little something like this:

Article 2:

Current Text:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father.

Beginning in Advent 2011:

And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages.

This second article talks about the second person of the Trinity—the Son, Jesus Christ.  But what’s all this “begotten” stuff mean?  Seriously, who talks like that anymore?  Well, the words might be old, but they have pretty strong meaning behind them.  Just like the last post, we’ll need to break this up into even smaller pieces to really get the WHOLE effect of what we’re talking about here.

We start this second Article with the words: “one Lord, Jesus Christ.”  But wait—I thought GOD was the Lord!  So you might ask, “How can Jesus be Lord if God is Lord?” and my answer would be, “Yes.”  Confused?  You probably should be at this point.  Here’s where my good buddy the Blessed John Paul II comes in handy.  He wrote an Encyclical (letter from the pope to the bishops of the whole church, or sometimes to a particular part of the world, or even to those of a specific country) in September 1998 called Fides et Ratio, which is Latin (*gasp* Latin??? Really??? In the Catholic Church???...hard to believe, I know…) for “Faith and Reason.”  In this encyclical, this man, who will most likely be remembered as one of the greatest theological minds of Church history, explained that we need both faith AND reason to help us on our journey.  Some would believe that all they need is faith, and that can get them through anything.  However, that’s pretty dangerous, because we’re human.  I mean, look at Jesus, Himself: The night before He died, He KNEW He was going to die, and KNEW that it was necessary for the salvation of the world (we’ll get to that later), but still PLEADED with God to not have to go through with it (read Matthew 26:36-46).  Now if Jesus had trouble accepting some things, how much more will our feeble minds cause us to falter in things that we need to accept on faith?  On the flip side, some think that if they can only understand more ABOUT God that they won’t need to accept things on faith as much.  The problem with this theory is that our intellectual minds will only take us so far.  In the end, there is no undeniable, scientific PROOF that God exists.  We ultimately just need to accept that (as well as other things) on faith and let our reason back it up and solidify our faith, just as our reasoning can help us understand God more fully, but our faith is necessary to complement it. 

So back to the “one Lord, Jesus Christ.”  One because there is one God.  Lord because he is master of all creation. Jesus because that’s what God told Mary to name her son (Luke 1:31). Christ coming from the Greek Christos meaning, “anointed one.”  Throughout the Old Testament, we see different examples of priests, prophets, and kings being anointed with oil as a sign of blessing and commissioning them for their roles and duties.  Christ (just like each Christian that follows Him is at our Baptism) is under the mission of a priest, prophet, AND a king, and is therefore anointed by God to fulfill these roles.

Then we have (going by the Advent 2011 version): “…the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages.”  The Merriam-Webster (online) Dictionary’s 2^nd definition of the word beget points beautifully to this concept within the Trinity by defining it this way:  “to produce especially as an effect or outgrowth.”  It is important to realize that God did not CREATE Jesus.  See, God lives outside of the realm of time.  We ONLY know how to experience things in time.  I mean, even as you read this sentence, time is passing, and the moment you were in at the start of this sentence has already passed, and it’s never coming back, just like the moment in which you’ll read the sentence that starts the next paragraph hasn’t happened yet.  All we know in this life is how to measure and refer to things in timeframes.  God is not bound by time.  I’ve heard it said that God is, was, and always will be.  I find this confusing, and border-line “incorrect.”  It’s much more correct and direct to simply say, “God IS.”  So when we say that Jesus was “born” of God “before all ages,” it’s really just our best explanation in our language and experience that are both HEAVILY reliant on “time” to give meaning to so many aspects of themselves.  Jesus is part of God, and there never was a time/moment/state of existence when that wasn’t the case.  Again, God existing outside of time is just one of those things you just have to take on faith.

So that’s the second Article of Faith in our Creed.  We’ll get though all 12 eventually—there’s just so much to unpack from each line of this thing, I believe (hah, “credo” means I believe…see what I did there?  Ok, that’s probably not even funny enough for PRIESTS to laugh at…so back to me concluding this post) we need to take just one or two articles at a time to fully take it all in.  So we’ll see you next time with the 3^rd Article.