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The profession of Faith, also known as the “symbol of faith”, expresses the central content and main truths the universal Church accepts, witnesses to, and transmits to all her members. By professing the faith, the baptised recognise their Christian identity, expressing with conviction, belief in them fundamentals of the Christian faith which were first spoken by or for us on the day of our baptism.
St Paul emphasises how professing the faith requires inner conversion. He says, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved” (Romans 10:9-10).
Liturgically, whenever we profess the faith, either by reciting the Apostles’ Creed (The Baptismal Creed of the Church of Rome) or the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (formulated 1700 years ago in 325 in Nicaea, and then refined in 381 in Constantinople), we keep the principal truths of the faith alive in our collective memory as God’s people.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “As on the day of our Baptism, when our whole life was entrusted to the "standard of teaching", [Rom 6:17] let us embrace the Creed of our life-giving faith. To say the Creed with faith is to enter into communion with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and also with the whole Church which transmits the faith to us and in whose midst we believe.”
This Creed is the spiritual seal, our heart's meditation and an ever-present guardian; it is, unquestionably, the treasure of our soul. (St. Ambrose of Milan)
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