Facing East

Saying the Creed has always been a way of showing loyalty to Jesus, and that is the reason why it is said at every Baptism.  This custom goes back hundreds of years to the days when Christians were hunted and killed by the Roman police.

When anyone wanted to become a Christian he or she was first secretly taught the great facts of the Christian Faith.  This teaching took several weeks.  At last the day of Baptism arrived, but before the people could be baptised they first had to refuse to have anything more to do with the Devil and evil.

We often think of evil as darkness, as when we call an evil deed a dark deed.  So when new Christians made this refusal they did so facing west, the part of the sky where the sun sets before the fall of night.

Then, turning round as though they were turning their backs on the Devil, they faced east.  As the first light of dawn which drives away the darkness of the night appears in the east, this meant that they were now turning to God.  So, facing east, each person recited the Creed to show his or her loyalty to Jesus.  It is for that reason that we still turn to the east when we say the Creed.

Always be proud of belonging to the Church.  Never be like some people, grown up men and women, who are ashamed of being thought a Christian and are even afraid to go to Church in case they are laughed at.  Think instead of those brave followers of Jesus in the Early Church who went Sunday by Sunday to the Eucharist at the risk of lives, who preferred to be torn to pieces by lions rather than give up being Christians, and whose blood stained the sand of every arena in the Roman Empire.