Born of the Virgin Mary

How the Apostles' Creed Brought Changed My Understanding of the Church

The Glorification of the Virgin, from The Life of the Virgin, Jacques Callot, 1612-1635

I was a bit lost. Fresh out of leaving the United Methodist Church (UMC) over its condoning of sexual sins, I was yearning for a deeper relationship with Christ but wasn’t sure where to turn. What did I believe? A better question; what’s the Truth? It was in my search for deeper faith that I decided to lean on an understanding of the faith as taught by the Early Church. If I was willing to carry on anything I learned in the UMC, it was the Apostles’ Creed. Why? Well, if it was a good enough summary of the faith for the early Christians (some say the Creed has roots in the second century) then it was good enough for me. So in August of 2023, I added the Creed to my daily prayers.

Let’s pray it now:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; 
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord, 
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, 
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. 
He descended into Hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; 
He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; 
from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. 
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. 
Amen.

Little did I know reciting the Creed was going to force me to ask questions I’d never asked before. I would say I “agreed with1” all of the claims of the Creed on the surface, but a few phrases began to stand out and warranted some clarification. Communion of saints? Holy Catholic Church? What am I saying here? As a Methodist, I said these words because that’s what I was taught to do. It was time to find out what all that actually meant.

It’s important to note that while all this was occurring, I had been listening to a podcast called The Lord of Spirits and reading a few texts about the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the show, two Eastern Orthodox priests unpack biblical narratives and really dig into church history and theology. This is where I began to face one question in particular; what is going on with prayer to the Saints?

Communion of Saints?

Why is it that zero Protestants (that I know of) will “pray to a saint” yet the Orthodox and Catholics do so every day? Would I be so arrogant as to call these fellow Christians heretics? Certainly not. So what’s going on here? And what is communion exactly?

To put it very simply, the Lord of Spirits podcast walloped me by pointing out one simple fact: THE SAINTS AREN’T DEAD. One of the hosts even said something to the effect of, “The Saints are more alive than we are.” It was pointed out that yes, Holy Scripture forbids the conjuring of spirits and necromancy but praying to the saint is nothing of the sort. For example, by praying to Saint Joseph and seeking support ( a.k.a. asking him to pray for me) to become a more devout father, I’m not asking for power, riches, or to know the future. No. I’m turning to a man who is literally alive in heaven with Christ (John 11:25, 14:6 or Matthew 22:32) and asking him to pray for me. Just as I am asking you, living person, to pray the same request for me. Praise be to God he gives us all to each other to eternally pray for our brothers and sisters, and for the strength of the prayers of those who have already been sanctified (James 5:16).

Now, I certainly won’t attempt to explain or understand the mechanics of how God allows his living saints in heaven to hear and intercede for us on earth, but I do know nothing is impossible with God. And, if saints in heaven rejoice at the conversion of a sinner, I think it’s entirely likely those saints would be praying for us. In fact, scripture tells us they are (Rev. 4:10, 5:8, 6:9-11).

So, if the Saints aren’t dead, do I believe they can hear me in heaven and pray for me? Well, ya know, I keep saying I believe in the “Communion of Saints” right? How can communion with anyone be possible if they can’t hear you? So at a base-level understanding of communion, as in the act of being of one accord and giving each other to God in prayer, I decided to stand by the Creed and fully embrace the teachings of the early church. And what about “communion of saints” when it comes to Communion, a.k.a. the Eucharist2? Somewhere along my digging into the Catholic Church, it was explained to me that Catholics view mass as not just worship on earth, but a joining of worship in heaven. So while we worship the body and divinity of Christ literally in our midst in the Eucharist on Sunday, we’re also somehow joining the eternal worship of God with the saints and angels in heaven. I’m not going to lie, I love the boldness and audacity in that claim and the acknowledgement of Jesus’ true presence in the Eucharist. Worship has never made so much sense to me as it has since I started going to mass. Not that I never had good experiences or never felt anything in protestant worship, but my understanding of what worship in mass is and how it connects us to Jesus continues to blow my mind.

The realization that the saints are, in fact, not dead and the recognition that they do indeed pray for us gave me a richer sense of Christian community (communion) and made me feel much more confident in reciting the Apostles’ Creed. But the realization also forced an unexpected problem. Recognizing the saints as still living forced me to reconcile my understanding of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Encountering my Mother and the capital-c Catholic Church

Right about the time I changed my mind about praying to saints, I started to encounter more and more information about the rosary. I was certainly seeing mentions of it from my Catholic friends here on Substack but it also just started showing up everywhere. I’d read a bit of Scott Hahn or watch Pints with Aquinas and someone would drop a line or two about Our Lady or discuss the importance of a daily rosary in their life. And I was troubled. Because I’d decided I could no longer discount prayer to saints, I had no leg to stand on when it came to dismissing prayers to Mary. I mean of course Mary is in heaven! She said yes to God, conceived of the Holy Spirit, and gave birth to Jesus! Again, I was professing those same core beliefs in the Creed every day and it became clear to me there was much more I needed to learn about this woman I talk about every day.

So where to start? Well, how about prayer?

At this point, I’d come across more “book learning” about Mary than I could handle. Ever virgin? Bodily assumed? QUEEN OF HEAVEN AND EARTH? It might be surprising to say, but I had no substantial objections to these claims3. Thankfully my Protestant background wasn’t necessarily anti-Mary, it just didn’t give her much attention. However, I’d learned from The Lord of Spirits about the structure of the ancient Davidic kingdom and how the mother of the king was given the title and duties of queen. So, if Christ is the King of kings and is the fulfillment of the Davidic king, this would give Mary a special place in God’s kingdom and divine council as Queen Mother. It’s understood that the queen mother served as an advocate for average citizens and counselor to the king in ancient times, so why is it too much to assume that Mary would fulfill this role now in the eternal kingdom? Again, this was beginning to make sense for me. All that was left for me to do was to trust the Church. If I was going to say a prayer to Mary (like I was feeling led to do) and acknowledge her status, I felt that was more or less an admission that there was such thing as the *Church and a recognition of the papacy. Here we go again with “the Holy Catholic Church.”

Sola scriptura and Scott Hahn

My biggest objection to the Catholic Church at this point was the papacy. I had an uneducated understanding of papal infallibility, but mostly, I had no desire to grant one man that much authority. You’re going to tell me when to go to church or how to interpret scripture? *Ah-ha! That’s where I caught myself in a bit of a contradiction. You see, I decided there was such a thing as a right or wrong interpretation of scripture when I left the UMC. By determining the UMC is using scripture towards its twisted means of inclusion, I was arguing myself out of the Protestant pillar of sola scriptura and deciding that the UMC interpretation is wrong. So if I am going to claim the UMC is wrong, by what authority do I have to do so? Well, how about it’s not me who says the interpretation is wrong? What if it’s the Holy Catholic Church, the same body that compiled the books we know as the Holy Bible in the first place? The same church that has managed to withstand cultures and kingdoms for 2000+ years? Can I call on them? I was feeling more and more like I could. Okay, so there is a body of Christ on earth (the Church) that can act as an authority on earth to help guide the faithful and that body recognizes a singular man as it’s earthly authority? Well, is there a biblical basis for this thing these Catholics now call the papacy? Turns out there is!

Full disclosure, this is not *the video I came across in which Dr. Scott Hahn makes this argument for the biblical basis of the papacy. That video is connected to Pints with Aquinas (a terrific Catholic interview-style podcast) but I can’t seem to find it. However, the message is the same: the role of the pope we have now mirrors that of the prime ministers of ancient Israel. Christ is the King and head of the Church and is ruling from heaven, yet he established his prime minister (the Pope) to govern his earthly kingdom until he returns.

Now mind you all this took place over the course of about four months. So in that short period of time, this ancient prayer (along with Holy Scripture and meditative prayer) had torn down all of my walls. I was left with no defense in denying the Catholic Church and the time had come to act. I decided I was going to say my first prayer to a Saint, but not just any Saint. Queen of All Saints, the Blessed Virgin Mary. I’d decided I was going to say my first rosary but of course I had no idea where to start. Upon my first search of what to say, I cannot tell you just how much in shock I was to find that the very first prayer in the Rosary is THE APOSTLES’ CREED. I was in serious awe at what God was doing.

So in December of 2023, I smiled, made the sign of the cross, and said my first rosary on my drive to work while tears streamed down my face. And in that moment I felt the reassuring presence of a loving Mother and knew she was there to help. It truly felt like she was pulling me into a room full of my brothers and sisters in Christ and saying, “Well, here we are. Time to get to know everyone!”

Praise God for his mysterious ways. He took me, chief of sinners, and showed me that truth can be found even in darkness. He showed me that things of this world have no power against God or his Church, the pillar of truth (1 Tim. 3:15). And he reminded me again that if we’re willing to seek and knock, the door will indeed be open.