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“and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father…”

10 April 2025

The CHC blog

"We believe in one God the Father Almighty, maker of all things..."
Passiontide, Nicea and the Jubilee

By Stefan Kaminski

In the last post, we considered the opening statement of Nicea’s formulation: the foundation of the whole Christian faith in the absolute omnipotence and benevolence of God. But it is in the statement above that follows, that Nicea reveals its principle interest: a firm – and blasphemous, to many – affirmation of the divinity of Jesus Christ.

In this statement, Jesus’ name is bracketed by two expressions: “one Lord” and “the only begotten of the Father”.

The first of these – “one Lord” – firmly grounds us in the Divinity revealed by the Old Testament. The Latin term dominus is a rendering of the Greek kyrios, which in turn is a strict translation of the Hebrew, adonai. Kyrios is also used in the Greek Old Testament as equivalent for the divine name of Yahweh, thus appearing some 9,000 times in total throughout the Septuagint.

A bit like the statement of Jesus that so provoked the Pharisees and Scribes in today’s Gospel reading (“Before Abraham ever was, I AM”, Jn 8:58), designating Christ as kyrios – Lord – is a clear claim of the divine nature of His Person.

The second phrase adds further light to this, moving from a pre-Christian grasp of monotheism to the full mystery of a God who is Love. In the begetting of the Son by the Father and the expression of this bond in the Holy Spirit, the very essence and goal of our personhood – our relationality – is revealed. This is the sublime communion of Love that we are made by (“in the image of God He created him”, Gn 1:27) and for (“Behold, the dwelling of God is with men… and God Himself will be with them”, Rev. 21:3).

Moses and the Burning Bush, by Raphael

The coming of God as man is precisely what the Jubilee Year commemorates. Originally intended as a centenary celebration of the Incarnation by Pope Boniface VII, who inaugurated it in 1300, the interval between Jubilee years underwent several changes before being settled at 25 years by Pope Paul II, and thus it has remained since the Holy Year of 1475.

However, neither is the high Middle Ages the real reference point. Once again, we need return to the very incarnate nature of the convenantal relationship instituted by God, of which Christ is the fulfilment and final word.

The Jubilee Year is an institution decreed by the Lord God to the Israelite people, and codified in the Book of Leviticus.

The year of Jubilee marked the end of the seventh cycle of seven years (i.e. the fiftieth year) – a symbol of the perfection of God’s work. As such, it was a year of joy and of universal pardon: “Thou shalt sanctify the fiftieth year, and shalt proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of thy land: for it is the year of jubilee” (Leviticus 25:10). By this year, all debts were to have been written off, and every man free to return to his home and retake possession of his land. As a time of rest from labour and reliance on the Lord’s Providence, it was also an opportunity to allow the land to recover from agricultural use.

The coming of God Himself, with the full revelation of the Son by the Father (“This is my beloved Son”, Mt 3:17) and of the Father by the Son (“if you knew me, you would know my Father also”, Jn 14:7), constitutes the perfection – the ‘fiftieth year’ – of God’s work, and is the only source of true joy and pardon.

Thus, the Jubilee Year takes on a particular significance as we approach the mystery of our salvation – the end for which God became man, and the culmination of the liturgical year. During the Passiontide of a Holy Year, we not only commemorate the coming together of Priest and Victim in the Paschal Triduum, but the Church offers further opportunities to claim the full effect of this saving Sacrifice.

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“We believe in one God the Father Almighty”

15 March 2025

The CHC blog

"We believe in one God the Father Almighty, maker of all things..."
Commemorating the 1,700th anniversary of Nicea

By Stefan Kaminski

This is the opening statement of the symbol of the Church’s first Ecumenical Council, convened in Nicea in 325 A.D. by Emperor Constantine, in concert with Pope Sylvester I. For the last 1,700 years, Christians have repeated these words to signify their participation in the ecclesial communion as believing members.

Perhaps no statement in the Creed is more fundamental than this one, at the level of establishing the horizon and backdrop of our thinking and imagination. This foundational belief sets the intellectual scene for the way we perceive reality: the world around us, other people and ourselves.

Commentators such as Mgr James Shea, President of the University of Mary in the US, rightly interrogate the basic intellectual framework that underpins contemporary Western society. Mgr Shea contends that we are essentially back in an “Apostolic era”, rather than a Christian one, as society’s collective imagination does not any longer operate on the foundations of a Creator and Redeemer God. Christianity today, he suggests, is facing a challenge not dissimilar to that of the early Church. Our belief in “one God, the Almighty Father” is in many ways no less counter-cultural in a secular, pluralistic society than it was in the pagan, pantheistic one of Rome.

The only difference is that today, theoretically, Christianity is a public point of reference and a large proportion of the population express some sort of belief in God, with a significant minority still professing a Christian belief. However, practically-speaking, religious faith is often seen as a private matter of subjective belief which has no place for expression in public life.

The opening of the Nicene Symbol is a powerful reminder that the very opposite is true. At the heart of Nicea’s first statement is the all-encompassing and creative power of the Father. This power is not to be understood in the common sense of ‘power over something’ or ‘power to do something specific’; rather, it is absolute power, within which all existence resides.

The radicality of this is easy to miss. To “create”, as spoken of in Genesis 1 and intended by the Nicene Creed, is “to call into being from non-being, from nothingness” (St John Paul II). God’s creation consists of willing everything that exists outside of Him, to be. It is this that the Church intends by “omnipotent” or “almighty”.

The rest of our Christian vision cascades from this starting point. If God is the only Being that is (“I am who I am”, Exodus 3:14), then everything that is created receives its being from God – or better still, receives being from God. Put differently, if the act of being belongs only to God, then all things and creatures are and continue to be by virtue of God’s will: “For he spoke, and it came to be” (Ps 33:9).

This has a profound consequence for our understanding of things in themselves. God, Who is Good, only creates and wills what is good. Thus, all things are good in their existence and in the way that they are intended by God. Nothing that exists can be said to be evil or wrong in the fact of its being and its being intended by God in a particular way. It is only when we redirect the purpose of something, starting with ourselves (Satan being the example par excellence), thereby detracting from God’s intention, that evil enters the equation.

It is thus that we can perhaps make sense of Jesus’ words, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Christ Himself is the Incarnation of this perfection, and the fact that God the Son gave Divine perfection human form tells us how high an intention and end God has for us.

Detail from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, by Michelangelo
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Tolkien’s Cosmology

The Logos & Literature: Elaborating the Divine
#1 Tolkien's Cosmology: Understanding our World

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

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JRR Tolkien’s mythical world captured the hearts and minds of millions. His world is one that speaks to us because it is anchored in a profound truth: that of a cosmos brought into being and continually guided, whilst simultaneously respecting the free choices of its creatures. Rev. Dr Halsall will explore the beauty of Tolkien’s vision as a reflection of the Catholic understanding of the cosmos, as defined in its relationship to the Creator.

About the speaker:

Fr Halsall is a priest of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, and teaches Philosophy at Allen Hall Seminary in London. Fr Halsall’s recent book – Creation and Beauty in Tolkien’s Catholic Vision – explores the philosophical themes in Tolkien’s crafted creation narratives, alongside those of the Christian tradition, influenced as they are by varieties of Christian Neoplatonism.

Other videos in the series:

#2 Fact & Fiction Today

#3 Catechetical Poetry

#4 Fiction as Formation: CS Lewis & Narnia

#5 Educating in Virtue

#6 Inspiring Heroism

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In the Beginning

A Journey of Salvation: The Drama Displayed
#1 In the Beginning

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:


A reflection on Genesis 1 and 2, on the nature of God and of creation, and on man’s place within creation. Supported by an examination of Michelangelo’s series of frescoes on creation.

Question & Answer session following the talk

About the speaker:

Stefan Kaminski is the Director of The Christian Heritage Centre. He gained a licentiate from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute in Rome, specialising in theological anthropology. Prior to that, he studied for degrees in Philosophy and in Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. He has worked in a wide variety of parishes and in schools, as a catechist and teacher.

Other videos in the series:

#2 The Naked Truth

#3 A Great Love Song

#4 The Greatest Gift

#5 Signs of Passion

#6 The Life to Come

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For Hopkins nature was charged with God’s glory

Friday 3rd March 2017

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

For Hopkins nature was charged with God’s glory

Fr Samuel Burke OP

Over recent months, a series of articles in this newspaper has showcased the great treasures of the new Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst.

The Stonyhurst Collections serve to explain, cherish and bring to life the inspiring history of the Christian faith in Britain. This final article explores the inspiration that the beautiful countryside of the Ribble Valley, which surrounds Stonyhurst, provided to the Jesuit priest and poet, Father Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Hopkins’ poetry is highly distinctive in theme. It brims with the conviction that the natural world is, as he put it, “word, expression, news of God.” To look upon creation was, for Hopkins, to see God’s glorious majesty or what he called the ‘inscape’ of things: an aesthetic experience which was “near at hand” for those who “had eyes to see it… it could be called out everywhere again”.

He took delight in seeing things as God made them, however small and commonplace. Confiding in his journal, he once wrote, ‘I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of our Lord by it.’

Stonyhurst seen across the fields from the south

In an earlier letter written to a friend whilst he was studying Classics at Balliol College, Oxford, Hopkins provides another insight into his playful curiosity and his deep love of the natural world, strikingly evident in the poetry he would later write: ‘I have particular periods of admiration for particular things in Nature – for a certain time I am astonished at the beauty of a tree, its shape, its effect.

‘Then, when the passions so to speak has subsided, it is consigned to my treasury of explored beauty, while something new takes it place in my enthusiasm.’

And it was a ‘treasury of explored beauty’ that he amply amassed during his three periods at Stonyhurst in Lancashire, even if his poetic output whilst stationed there was relatively modest.

With child-like enthusiasm, Hopkins records in his diary his first experience of the arresting beauty of the place when he first arrived at ‘the seminary’ (properly called St Mary’s Hall, now the Preparatory School at Stonyhurst) as a Jesuit Scholastic in early September 1870, aged 26 for his studies in philosophy.

On the night of his arrival, after being shown to his room at the front of the building on the top floor, Hopkins remained awake until dawn in order to witness the ‘beautiful range of moors dappled with light and shade’, a panoramic view that included the majestic Pendle Hill, which he likens to a ‘world-wielding shoulder’.

Hopkins had arrived at the seminary early, in fact. With the other scholastics on holiday, and classes not due to start until the following month, GMH had the leisure of exploring the spectacular environs of Stonyhurst, which he did with abandon, for as he would write in a later poem ‘…nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things’.

He roamed hills, woodlands and Lancashire meadows ‘smeared yellow with buttercups and bright squares of rapefield in the landscape’. Hopkin’s way of seeing the world was deeply influenced by the writings of the Franciscan theologian, Duns Scotus.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

A journal entry for 3rd August 1872 records his discovery of Scotus’ Scriptum Oxoniense super Sententiis in the Badeley library on the Isle of Man during a vacation he took from Stonyhurst.

Hopkins describes his find as ‘a mercy from God’ and comments that he was ‘flush with a new stroke of enthusiasm.’ He was to write of his fondness for the theologian in a later poem, Duns Scotus’ Oxford. 

This first stay at St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst, as a Jesuit scholastic, lasted three years (1870-1873). In those days it was an austere regime, which at times proved challenging for the young man. 

Hopkins attended two one hour lectures in the morning and did a further three hours of study from 5 – 8pm. Religious observances and time for recreation were fitted in around these fixed times, and the only permitted conversation was at mealtimes. 

Although he might have expected to become a teacher at one of the Jesuit schools, on completing his philosophy studies, Hopkins was initially sent back to Manresa, the Jesuit Noviciate House at Roehampton, to serve as Professor of Rhetoric, before proceeding to St Bueno’s where he was subsequently ordained as a priest. 

Later, as a priest, he twice returned to Stonyhurst. His second stay was for a His third lasted for just over a year from September 1882 to December 1883, when – though sad to leave – he was called to University College Dublin. On both occasions he taught Classics as a tutor to the Gentlemen Philosophers, a group of Catholic laymen who received their university education at Stonyhurst.

As Catholics were forbidden to take degrees at Oxford and Cambridge, and indeed forbidden from doing so by Catholic bishops, they enrolled for external Bachelors degrees at the University of London. During the time he spent at Stonyhurst, Hopkins continued to deepen his love of the world around him. As part of his interest in God’s created order, Hopkins developed a great interest in astronomical matters, facilitated by the fine observatory at Stonyhurst, which provided research for the Vatican Observatory and is still in use today.

He writes poetic descriptions of the peculiar sunsets he saw there: ‘A bright sunset lines the clouds so that their brims look like gold, brass, bronze, or steel. It fetches out those dazzling flecks and spangles which people call fish-scales. It gives to a mackerel or dappled cloudrack the appearance of quilted crimson silk, or a ploughed field glazed with crimson ice.’

It wasn’t just the sun which caught his attention. He would find beauty — “the grandeur of God” — in all manner of places, some of them fairly unlikely. Stories abound of his eccentric behaviour at Stonyhurst, such as the time when he hung over a frozen pond to observe bubbles trapped beneath the ice or was seen staring at the gravel outside St Mary’s Hall.

Hopkins had a particular love for “the three beautiful rivers” near Stonyhurst. One of them, the Calder, runs close to the nearby remains of a Cistercian monastery, Whalley Abbey. Another, the River Hodder, sits beneath the school in a thick wood and was used by Hopkins and others for bathing, even if precarious after heavy rainfall. 

The third and most significant of these rivers, the River Ribble, gives its name to the Ribble Valley, the wider expanse that surrounds Stonyhurst and the eponymous poem, Ribblesdale, one of at least five poems which Hopkins wrote during his stays at Stonyhurst. 

The poem tells how nature cannot speak for itself but must find its voice through a human translator, as it were. And, as the following verses demonstrate, few voices were as finely tuned as that of Hopkins:

The River Hodder, well known to Hopkins

Earth, sweet Earth, sweet landscape,
with leavés throng
And louchéd low grass, heaven
that dost appeal
To, with no tongue to plead,
no heart to feel;
That canst but only be, but dost
that long
Thou canst but be, but that thou
well dost;strong
Thy plea with him who dealt, nay
does now deal,
Thy lovely dale down thus and
thus bids reel
Thy river, and o’er gives all to
rack or wrong.
And what is Earth’s eye, tongue,
or heart else, where
Else, but in dear and dogged man?
– Ah, the heir
To his own selfbent so bound,so
tied to his turn,
To thriftless reave both our rich
round world bare
And none reck of world after,
this bids wear
Earth brows of such care, care
and dear concern.

Other poems he wrote at Stonyhurst comprise: The Wreck of the Eurydice, with resonances of his earlier and more confessional Wreck of the Deutschland; The May Magnificat and The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air we Breathe – two poems in honour of Our Lady, whose image was and remains prominent in various statues inside the building and grounds; as well as The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo. In that poem, Hopkins confronts the dreadful reality of the loss and decay of the beauty that he holds dear:

How to keep—is there any any, is
there none such, nowhere known some,
bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace,
latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty,
beauty, … from vanishing away?

As the poem progresses, Hopkins proceeds to take solace in the beauty that lies ‘yonder’ in God, who is ‘beauty’s self and beauty’s giver’.

In the midst of a world marked by loss and decay, a walk in the countryside can do us untold good lifting our spirits as such rambles did for Hopkins.

The Christian Heritage Centre is establishing a Hopkins’ walking route around Stonyhurst in his memory to accompany the Tolkien Trail, already available.

On such pleasant walks, we can gaze upon the beauty around us and can say with Hopkins: ‘I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes / Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour’.