A Creed Awakening

On the 1,700th Anniversary of Nicaea
by Patrick Henry Reardon

If I were able to write fiction, I would like to write like Willa Cather. I never will, of course, but the spiritual appeal of her stories prompts me, somewhat boldly, to suppose that she and I have shared certain experiences of a religious/artistic nature.

What I feel here to be an affinity I can, in one case, document as a fact: Willa Cather and I have shared a common fascination with the Nicene Creed. Like her, I love to recite the Creed very slowly and thoughtfully. In my own case, it has become nearly an obsession; its text gives shape to my sense of reality; it provides my inner architecture.

I render this personal testimony as we Christians prepare, very shortly this year, to remember the Council of Nicaea on the occasion of its 1,700th anniversary. It should not go by unnoticed.

Appropriate Before Sleep?

Before commenting further on the Creed, however, let me speak once more of Willa Cather. I must confess that my approach to the Creed is not entirely identical with hers. I can indicate the difference by quoting what she wrote in a letter to her niece and goddaughter Helen Louise Cather on Easter Sunday, March 23, 1940:

I think the Nicene Creed the most beautiful prose in the world. If I am wakeful in the night and think it through to myself, slowly, I can nearly always go to sleep. There is such authority and majesty in it.

Since I was only two years old when she wrote this letter—nor, as I recall, was Willa a friend of the family—there was no opportunity to raise a question that bothers me now. From my current perspective, I would have to say, “Miss Cather, forgive my inquiry, but would you back up a bit, please, ma’am, and break that down for me. I don’t quite follow the logic here. You say this ‘most beautiful prose in the world,’ with ‘such authority and majesty in it,’ puts you to sleep?”

But then I further reflect, well, maybe it does—in a special sense. Although the Nicene Creed has never put me to sleep, I can think of no better text to recite when, at the end, I do fall asleep in the Lord.

In fact, I can hardly count the many Christians whose hands I have held, over the years, while reciting that Creed in their hearing as they released their last breath and passed on to glory. If I am the priest at his bedside, the dying Christian will always make his Passover with the Nicene Creed ringing in his ears. Perhaps its aspect of a final word is the reason the Orthodox Church prescribes the Creed’s recitation each night at Compline.

Truths Thought Through

Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).

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