This Holy Year 2025, the Church celebrates some special events: the date of Easter will coincide for Eastern and Western Christians. This year, 2025, too on May 20th, 1,700 years later, the Christian world will commemorate the opening of the Council of Nicaea in Asia Minor, the first ecumenical council in history. From it emerged the Creed, which, completed by the Council of Constantinople in 381, became the identity of the faith in Jesus Christ professed by the Church every Sunday in the celebration of the Eucharist.
This anniversary, in this Jubilee Year, centered on “Christ, our Hope” – as Pope Francis has emphasized –, in a historic moment like the one we are living in, marked by the story of war and by innumerable anxieties and uncertainties, “what is essential for Christians, what is most beautiful, most attractive and at the same time most necessary, is precisely the faith in Jesus Christ proclaimed at Nicaea: this is the fundamental task of the Church” (Address to the Participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, 26 January 2024).
The International Theological Commission (ITC) has published on the Vatican website an important and detailed document entitled: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. 1700th Anniversary of the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea.” The objective is not only to recall the tenor and significance of the Council, undoubtedly of capital importance in the history of the Church, but also to highlight the extraordinary resources that the Creed, professed from that time until today, preserves and relaunches in the perspective of the new stage of evangelization that the Church is called to live.
The third number of our Constitutions clearly states: “The apostolic concern of the Congregation extends to the faithful who receive ordinary pastoral care, so that, strengthened in their faith, they may continually renew their conversion to God and bear witness to their faith in their daily lives.”
And in the presentation of the ICC document it was said: “The truth of one God who, being love, is Trinity and who in the Son becomes one of us out of love – this is the faith that the Council of Nicaea bears witness to and transmits – is the authentic principle of fraternity between persons and peoples, and of the transformation of history in the light of the prayer that Jesus addressed to the Father on the eve of the supreme gift of his life for us: “Father, that they all may be one, as you and I are one” (cf. Jn 17:22).”
As Scala News we can suggest reading the book by Fr. Alberto de Mingo CSsR: “The Nicene Creed explained with simplicity” (https://www.cssr.news/spanish/2024/12/el-credo-de-nicea-explicado-con-sencillez-libro-del-p-alberto-de-mingo-cssr/) where he explains with simplicity, but also with rigor, each article of the Creed, showing its connection with the believing experiences on which they are based and paying special attention to Sacred Scripture.
“Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. 1700th Anniversary of the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea”
The Council of Nicaea has remained in the Christian consciousness primarily through the Creed, which captures, defines, and proclaims faith in salvation through Jesus Christ and the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The CTI document is presented in 4 chapters, which are described in the presentation:
In the first chapter: a doxological reading of the Creed, highlighting its soteriological and therefore Christological, Trinitarian, and anthropological resources. This will be an opportunity to underline its importance and provide new boost on the journey toward Christian unity.
In a second chapter, of a patristic nature, we will explore how liturgical life, and the life of prayer have been fertilized in the Church since the Council.
In the third chapter, he presents the way in which the Creed and the event of the Council bear witness to the very event of Jesus Christ, whose irruption into history offers unprecedented access to God and introduces a transformation of human thought, that is, an event of Wisdom.
Finally, the fourth chapter addresses the conditions for the credibility of the faith professed at Nicaea, a stage of fundamental theology that will highlight the nature and identity of the Church as the authentic interpreter of the normative truth of the faith through the Magisterium and guardian of believers, especially the smallest and most vulnerable.
Here is the full text of the document in Spanish: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. 1700th Anniversary of the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea”
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