Credo: cor do - 1st week Lent Tuesday 2013

After reflecting with you on the Eucharist every Tuesday for the past five months, beginning today, because we are celebrating the year of faith, I would like to reflect with you the Creed, specifically the Apostles’ Creed, consisting of twelve articles of faith.  I am doing this not because I know a lot and I have so much to impart.  No, that is not the case.  If I am again venturing into a series of homilies on the creed it is because I want to review my faith, I want to study it again, to open the pages of my catechism once more so that I can re-appreciate the faith I have received in baptism.  In sharing with you these series of reflections on the creed I am learning again, I am permitting myself to be taught again, to be catechized again so that I may more and more appreciate this great gift faith that was carefully handed down to me, and to all of us by the Church. I am revisiting my faith, and this time I am going to do it with you.  

Today I begin this reflection by starting off with the first two words we utter when we recite the creed, I believe.  I believe is Credo in Latin.  In fact the word creed comes from this Latin Word, credo.   The word credo comes from two Latin words, namely, cor and do.  Cor means “the heart,” and do means “I give.”  Credo therefore means “I give the heart.”  When you give your heart to somebody it does not just simply involve knowing the person, it does not just involve memorizing his name, his date of birth, his age, his address, the names of his mother and father.  Remember what we did when we were young?  The catechist would ask, pila ang Dios?  And all of us will answer, isa!  Then she would ask, pila ang persona sang Dios – tatlo; Sino sila? Amay, Anak kag Espiritu Santo.  We all memorized that, indi bala?  But Credo is not just memorizing.  Not only that. 

When you give your heart to somebody you are not just simply working for that person, as in he is the boss and I am under his employ and therefore under his pay.  No.  When you give the heart to somebody you are entering into a relationship, and not just any kind of relationship but a relationship that is founded in love.  When you give your heart to somebody you are defining the bond the binds you to each other, not a contract but a covenant, something that is more binding than a piece of notarized paper because it is driven by the power of love.

This is what the creed is.  Precisely Jesus taught us to call God our Father because by believing, by saying credo, we are entering into a relationship, I have entered into a relationship, a relationship founded on my love for God, a relationship of son and Father, daughter and Father.

So credo, I believe, is an all encompassing phrase.  It can mean I know and I accept it as true, tuod gid ina, thus, I believe.  Tuod gid nga may kabuhi nga wala sing katapusan, tuod gid nga mabanhaw ang mga miantay, tuod gid nga may kaaptawaran sang sala.  Yes I believe. 

But that is not all, because credo, I believe can also mean I trust, even if it is illogical, even if it is hard to believe, credo, I trust you, nagasalig ako kay masaligan ka. 

But that is not all because credo, I believe can mean I obey, bisan budlay, I will obey.  Bisan budlay tunlon, I will obey, because I believe.  But it is not only that. 

As I have said, credo is to enter into a relationship with God.  I have given God my heart.  In the eyes of Jesus God is Father.  That is the effect of credo.  God is Abba, tatay.  There will exist a relationship.

And so we ask ourselves, is my belief in God a relationship?  Is my prayer, is my coming to church for the mass a way of nourishing and nurturing that relationship?  Are my actions, my decisions, in life or in business, in public or in private imbued and influenced by this relationship with God.  Does this define who I am and what I do?  I believe, credo, cor do, I give the heart.