"Return to our sources"

Vatican II invited us all to “return to our sources”. Pope Leo is now inviting us Catholics and all Christians to return to the foundations of our common faith in his Apostolic Letter : "In the Unity of Faith”. This is to commemorate the 1700th anniversary of the first ever Ecumenical  Council held in Nicaea in 325AD. That era was as politically troubled as our own and within the Church, too, there were serious disputes and divisions. Arius, a Catholic priest, preached that Jesus was merely human and this heresy became known as Arianism. 

" This led to one of the greatest crises in the Church’s first millennium. The reason for the dispute was not a minor detail. It concerned the essence of the Christian faith, namely the answer to the decisive question that Jesus had asked his disciples at Caesarea Philippi: “Who do you say that I am?” (Mt 16:15).” (In Unitate Fidei)

The Fathers of the Church and some great theologians, including St Athanasius, met together in Nicaea and found new language to express our belief that Jesus Is The Son of God, fully divine.  This they spelled out in what became known as “the Nicene Creed” that we say together during Mass every Sunday. This Creed predates all divisions in our Church and so can be the source of unity between us.   The Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople invited Pope Leo to come to Iznik (ancient Nicaea) in Turkey to celebrate the great anniversary ( 27th - 30th November), an encouraging sign of communion and gathering closeness between our Churches. 

"We must therefore ask ourselves: What about our interior reception of the Creed today? Do we experience that it also affects our current situation? Do we understand and live out what we say every Sunday? What do these words mean for our lives?”  ( In Unitate Fidei) 

“ God is supremely great, yet He is happy to reach out humbly towards the little ones.  He willed not only that His Son should become a human being but also  that He should become a little Child". SR 2 

“The sisters will take great care not to introduce any doctrine of which they are not perfectly clear or teach what they do not understand adequately” RC 6