This is an excellent point. As Catholics, we profess our faith each Sunday by reciting the Nicene Creed, yet I wonder how many do so out of rote rather than truly reflecting on the truths expressed therein. To ensure we have a firm uderstanding of our faith (i.e. what we state each Sunday), the Church has given us the catechism. It breaks the Nicene Creed down into its elements and then links each statement to Scripture. For example:
PART ONE
THE PROFESSION OF FAITHSECTION ONE
"I BELIEVE" - "WE BELIEVE"26 We begin our profession of faith by saying: "I believe" or "We believe". Before expounding the Church's faith, as confessed in the Creed, celebrated in the liturgy and lived in observance of God's commandments and in prayer, we must first ask what "to believe" means. Faith is man's response to God, who reveals himself and gives himself to man, at the same time bringing man a superabundant light as he searches for the ultimate meaning of his life. Thus we shall consider first that search (Chapter One), then the divine Revelation by which God comes to meet man (Chapter Two), and finally the response of faith (Chapter Three).
CHAPTER ONE
MAN'S CAPACITY FOR GOD27 The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:
- The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator.1
28 In many ways, throughout history down to the present day, men have given expression to their quest for God in their religious beliefs and behavior: in their prayers, sacrifices, rituals, meditations, and so forth. These forms of religious expression, despite the ambiguities they often bring with them, are so universal that one may well call man a religious being:
- From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him - though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For "in him we live and move and have our being."2
1 Vatican Council II, GS 19 § 1.
2 Acts 17:26-28.
You can see more of how this comes together at the following link.
Thanks, NYer!