Day 24: Unity of Faith

Through the centuries, in so many languages, cultures, peoples and nations, the Church has constantly confessed this one faith, received from the one Lord, transmitted by one Baptism, and grounded in the conviction that all people have only one God and Father. CCC 172

In today's reading, we find the unity of our faith as seen in a diversity of languages, cultures, races, etc., all expressing that "the same way of salvation appears throughout the whole world," as St. Irenaeus of Lyons says. This is part of the beauty of Catholicism. It's not really the "bells and smells", but the unity across the world that Christ's Church brings. I can go to any Catholic Rite or Church, and find "the content of the Tradition is one and the same." The Mass is the same, whether in Latin, the vernacular, or any Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Catholic Churches. Our expressions of the faith differ, and even our language & customs, but the fullness of it still shines through. We see a fulfillment of Malachi 1:11:

Incense offerings are made to my name everywhere, and a pure offering; 

For my name is great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts.

We also see a brief intro into what St. John Henry Newman called the "development of doctrine". The Catechism Companion, Vol I (p. 53) puts it like this:

[T]he saving truth of the Faith does not change, but it must be understood and manifested in all ages and cultures. A development in understanding of a particular teaching does not involve an overturning or rejection of what went before. It involves making explicit something that is implicit, unpacking the gift we have been given.

Now that's a book I'll have to read again someday: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine!