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What I was born for, what I came into the world for, is to bear witness of the truth. John 18.
The Credo is a curious feature of the Mass, and I expect we shall probably have to devote a whole sermon to it. As you know, it is not an essential feature of the Mass; it only comes on certain big days. On all Sundays and all feasts of our Lord, our Lady, St. Joseph or the holy Angels; on feasts of the apostles and evangelists, because they spread the faith, and on feasts of doctors, because they defended the faith and explained it to us. Also on frightfully important patronal feasts, and on St. Mary Magdalen's day. I daresay that a thousand years hence the Church will be saying it at every Mass, and learned people will be inventing ingenious explanations of why it wasn't said every day in remote times like the twentieth century.
It wasn't, by the way, till the eleventh century, that is, Norman Conquest, 1066, that the Creed was said at Mass in the Roman rite at all. When you come to think of it, it's not so obvious why we do say it. I mean, at the baptism service the Creed comes in (although it's the other Creed) quite naturally. At the very start, you tell the infant that if it is going to be a member of the Christian Church it has got to keep the commandments, and it howls pretty dismally at that. When you have finished the business in the porch and take the infant to the font, you add, And, by the way, you've got to believe all the following statements, and repeat the Creed to it, at which it howls worse than ever. But then, you see, you've got an unbeliever in the church; at Mass, there may be one or two unbelievers who have come in to hear the sermon or the Mozart Mass, but surely the Church isn't going to worry about them? Since we are practically all believers and wouldn't be there if we weren't believers, what is the sense of holding up business to remind ourselves about the things we believe?
Well, I think the most important answer is this -- you have come to Mass to worship God, and that means worshipping God with your whole being, not just with bits of it. Worship doesn't mean merely letting your feelings go out to God, telling him how good he is and getting all worked up about your sins; doesn't mean merely letting your will go out to God, resolving that you are going to live for him and resigning yourself to all the uncomfortable things he may ask you to suffer for him. It means also letting your intellect go out to God, telling him that he exists, that he is utterly above your comprehension, and that he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ so as to make it possible for you to comprehend him a little. That is why I have taken my text from that passage we all know, but don't always reflect on, in St. John. The reason why I was born, our Lord tells Pilate, was-what? So as to save the world? So as to heal the sick and give sight to the blind? So as to comfort people who were unhappy? No, so as to tell the truth, so as to bear witness of the truth. That is man's first need; he is a reasonable animal, and he must know what he is and where he stands before he can sit down and be satisfied. And that is man's first duty; to think, and to think right. As part of your worship of him, God demands that you should let your intellect travel on the right lines in thinking about him. Very likely it is not much of an intellect, and shews strong signs of throwing up the sponge when it gets to recurring decimals. But it's the best intellect you've got, and it is all meant to be put at God's disposal.
I've told it you lots of times, but I'm going to say it again, truth does matter. Saying the right thing doesn't merely mean saying what's kind, it means saying what's true. If you thought this an interesting sermon, and came up to me afterwards to say, "What a boring sermon that was!" it would be a bad thing to do. It would be a bad thing to do because your words wouldn't be doing justice to your thought. If you think this a boring sermon, and come up to me afterwards to say, "What an interesting sermon that was! " it might be all very well for me, it might send me back to translating Paralipomenon with a lighter heart, but it would still be a bad thing to do, because your words wouldn't be doing justice to your thought. And so it is with dishonesty, cheating about marks, for example; so it is with lying of every kind. Of course, it is worse to cheat over marks if there is an exam on, and it may gain you an unfair advantage. Of course it's worse to tell a lie if it means letting other people down. But even when there is nothing much to be gained, when there is not much harm to be done, cheating or lying is wrong because it is warping your own moral nature. You are, if I may put it in that way, preventing yourself growing up. Kids lie, because they think it's something clever; how would you like to be called a kid? But you are, you know, if you encourage yourself in dishonest habits of mind; you are refusing to grow into the full stature of a woman; you are keeping a kind of soft spot in your mind which disgraces the image of God.
So, when you assist at a Mass where the Credo is said, there is something for you to think about. Tell Almighty God, "I know what I was born for, I know what I came into the world for; to bear witness of the truth. I can never really be a partaker of the Divine nature, Jesus Christ can never be on easy terms with me, until I have learned to see things as they are and to call things by their right names. And the most important kind of truth is the truth you have revealed to us; I want to let my mind be carried away by it, because that is one of the ways in which it is possible for me to worship you; indeed, it is the first thing I have got to do, if I am going to worship you. This and this and this I believe to be true, because you have told me that they are true; and although my mind can only take these truths in very imperfectly, because it's such a silly mind, I want it to be carried away by these truths, penetrated by these truths; I want it to chime in with these truths, as instinctively as my voice chimes in with the note that is given on the harmonium. Then my intellect, as well as the rest of me, will be worshipping you."
But, of course, there is a perfectly different question which, for all I know, you are dying to ask-Why should the Credo come in just here? I am sure there are lots of learned books that would enable me to answer that question, but I haven't got them, and I don't know. All I know is that some of the other rites in the Christian Church don't put it in in the same place. If you went to Mass in a certain chapel of the cathedral at Toledo, or in a certain chapel of the cathedral at Salamanca, which are both places in Spain, you would hear Mass said according to the Mozarabic rite; that is to say, you would hear a perfectly good Catholic Mass at which the Credo was said after the Consecration and before the Communion. So it's probably more or less of an accident that in our ordinary Roman rite it got stuck where it did. But I think on the whole it was a fortunate accident, if it was one; I think it is rather a jolly place to have it. For this reason; that if you follow the Gospel it is rather apt to drive you in on yourself; and the Credo helps to take you out of yourself; to make you see yourself as a very small and unimportant detail against a flaming background of eternal truth.
If you come to think of it, we are most of us a bit too self-centred; you are too apt to catch sight of yourself, if I may put it in that way, out of the corner of your eye. Most of us find that our thoughts, if we aren't careful, return too easily on ourselves; it's all right if we are watching a flick, or reading a detective story or something really gripping; but if we sit down to read about the kings of England it isn't long before we find that our attention has wandered back to Mary Jane. No, it's all right; I'm not going to scold you about having distractions in your prayers; for one thing I never do scold people about that, and for another thing that's not what I'm talking about. No, but if you follow the Gospel it is apt to make you think about YOU; the Gospel is so full of scoldings for rather second-rate Christians like you and me; some phrase of it sticks, and we feel dissatisfied with ourselves, and inclined to brood over it. And we fall to wondering why it is that the people round us, who after all have the best opportunity of judging, seem to think so poorly of us; as if it mattered a brass farthing what anybody except Almighty God thinks of us...And when we are in that rather self-centred, rather self-pitying mood, we need a bit of a jolt to take us out of ourselves. And the jolt that takes you out of yourself is the priest saying quite suddenly Credo in unum Deum. It always does come rather suddenly, doesn't it? At High Mass, it seems to take about half a minute while the organist is putting his music straight and the choir are clearing their throats before they can get on with the tune; as if this sudden announcement that the priest believes in one God had taken them all by surprise.
When you get a priest who really does his ceremonies well-and that must be a great relief, after me -he stands quite still and bolt upright during the first part of the Credo. I always feel I want to sway from side to side, and I expect I do. Because this part is so exciting; it's something almost more profane than a dance. Do you ever watch people playing Rugby football? Sometimes you will see a really good man get away with the ball and run for the touch-line, swaying from this side to that so as to make it more difficult for people to tackle him, and fending people off, first on this side then on that, when they try to interfere with him. That is what this first part of the Credo is like. It is the Catholic Church of Christ keeping its poise, resisting the onslaughts of heresy, first on this side, then on that, preserving the perfect balance of the faith and making straight for the goal. One God, the Father, the All-powerful, Creator of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen. One God; splendid; we've got that. And in one Lord, Jesus Christ . . . what exactly do you mean by Lord? Isn't Lord the same as God? Wait a moment; God's begotten Son; the only Son; yes, we are all sons of God, but this is the only Son who can claim God, in the strict sense, as his Father. We belong to time; he was begotten of his Father before time began. A paradox? Of course it is, to us; that act, not of creation but of Divine procreation, by which the Second Person of the Trinity has being, is eternal, with the eternity of God himself; there never was a time when he did not exist.
Why, then, he must be the same as God; there can't be two different Beings like that ... Wait a moment; God sprung from God, Light sprung from Light; tell me whether the sunlight is the same as the sun, or something different from the sun, then I will tell you how God can be sprung from God, and yet there is onlv one God still. The same in substance with the Father, a different Person, yet one with him in Godhead. By whom all things were made; we said just now that the First Person of the Blessed Trinity was creator of all ~hings, now we say that all things were made by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity; I and my Father are one, he told us; my Father is at work all the time, and I, I too am at work. The Arian heretics, you see, maintained that the Second Person of the Trinity was created; well, answers the Church, it's odd if that is so; he must have created himself.
. . . And then you get a fresh, sudden transition. Who for us, for us men, for our salvation, for the ridiculously unimportant salvation of ridiculously unimportant people like us, CAME DOWN FROM HEAVEN. Can you wonder that at that point the priest falls on his knees? You weren't following, of course, you were day-dreaming, and so you were taken by surprise, just like the organist at the Credo in unum Deum; if the girl behind you hadn't suddenly butted you with her nose in the small of the back, it's arguable that you would have forgotten to go down on your knees at all. But really, of course, the whole mood of the melody has changed. You are now thinking of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity as Incarnate, as Man, as our Representative, offering, as Man, to his Father, as God, that eternal sacrifice which we now come to commemorate, with which we now mean to associate ourselves. If you are really following, you will see that the Credo has come just at the right moment. It has taken our attention away from Mary Jane, swept it up into the most baffling and the most august mysteries of theology, only to bring it back again to where it started from, God come down to earth, and Mary Jane redeemed.
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