Apostles' Creed Ordinariate Style

Members of the Personal Ordinariate are familiar with the following version of the Apostles' Creed. The Creed is here ordered into twelve articles, which is a common thing to do.

1. I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth:
2. and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord,
3. who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,
4. suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.
5. He descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead;
6. he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father almighty;
7. from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
8. I believe in the Holy Ghost;
9. the holy Catholic Church; the Communion of Saints;
10. the Forgiveness of sins;
11. the Resurrection of the body,
12. and the life everlasting. Amen.

CCC194 The Apostles' Creed is so called because it is rightly considered to be a faithful summary of the apostles' faith. It is the ancient baptismal symbol of the Church of Rome. Its great authority arises from this fact: it is "the Creed of the Roman Church, the See of Peter the first of the apostles, to which he brought the common faith".

- St. Ambrose, Expl. symb. 7: PL 17,1196.

He descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead. [CCC]

633 Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, "hell" - Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek - because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into "Abraham's bosom": "It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham's bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell." Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.

Sitteth on the right hand of God

[CCC]

663 Henceforth Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father: "By 'the Father's right hand' we understand the glory and honor of divinity, where he who exists as Son of God before all ages, indeed as God, of one being with the Father, is seated bodily after he became incarnate and his flesh was glorified." 

664 Being seated at the Father's right hand signifies the inauguration of the Messiah's kingdom, the fulfillment of the prophet Daniel's vision concerning the Son of man: "To him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed." After this event the apostles became witnesses of the "kingdom [that] will have no end".

[WP] 

The right hand of God (Dextera Domini "right hand of the Lord" in Latin) or God's right hand may refer to the Bible and common speech as a metaphor for the omnipotence of God and as a motif in art. 

In the Bible, to be at the right side "is to be identified as being in the special place of honor". In Jesus' parable "The Sheep and the Goats", the sheep and goats are separated with the sheep on the right hand of God and the goats on the left hand. 

It is also a placement next to God in Heaven, in the traditional place of honor, mentioned in the New Testament as the place of Christ at Mark 16:19, Luke 22:69, Matthew 22:44 and 26:64, Acts 2:34 and 7:55, 1 Peter 3:22 and elsewhere. These uses reflect use of the phrase in the Old Testament, for example in Psalms 63:8 and 110:1. The implications of this anthropomorphic phrasing have been discussed at length by theologians, including Saint Thomas Aquinas.

The quick and the dead.

[CCC]

682 When he comes at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, the glorious Christ will reveal the secret disposition of hearts and will render to each man according to his works, and according to his acceptance or refusal of grace.

[WP]

The phrase is found in three passages in the 1611 King James version of the Bible: in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 10:42), Paul's letters to Timothy (2 Timothy 4:1), and the First Epistle of Peter. The last reads:[9] "For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead". 

This passage advises the reader of the perils of following outsiders in not obeying God's will. Specifically it warns that those who sin, both the quick and the dead, will be judged by Jesus Christ. In other words, it implies that God is able to act on the sins of a person whether that person is alive (quick) or has passed into the afterlife (dead).

Fr. Aidan Kimel: J. Derek Holmes, Theological Papers of John Henry Newman, p. 153). (John Stanislaus) Flanagan’s letter induced Newman to compose a short essay, which Ryder forwarded to Flanagan. In this essay Newman once again explores the nature of the apostolic deposit of revelation:

The Apostles did not merely know the Apostles Creed; what knowledge could be more jejune, unless the meaning of each separate word of it was known in fullness? They must know all and more than all about the word ‘Son of God,’ which the Church has enunciated since their time. And so of every article, & portion of an article. What then is meant by the Depositum? is it a list of articles that can be numbered? no, it is a large philosophy; all parts of which are connected together, & in a certain sense correlative together, so that he who really knows one part, may be said to know all, as ex pede Herculem. Thus the Apostles had the fullness of revealed knowledge, a fullness which they could as little realize to themselves, as the human mind, as such, can have all its thoughts present before it at once. They are elicited according to the occasion. A man of genius cannot go about with his genius in his hand: in an Apostle’s mind great part of his knowledge is from the nature of the case latent or implicit; and taking two Apostles, St Paul & St John, according to their respective circumstances, they either may teach the same thing in common, or again what is explicit in St Paul might be latent in St John and what is explicit in St John may be latent in St Paul. 

But how could such a knowledge, partly explicit partly implicit, and varying day by day as to what was the one and what the other, be transmitted to the Church after them? Thus: I believe the Creed (i.e. the Deposit, I say Creed as more intelligible, since it consists of Articles) was delivered to the Church with the gift of knowing its true and full meaning. A Divine philosophy is committed to her keeping: not a number of formulas such as a modern pedantic theologian may make theology to consist in, but a system of thought, sui generis in such sense that a mind that was possessed of it, that is, the Church’s mind, could definitely & unequivocally say whether this part of it, as traditionally expressed, meant this or that, and whether this or that was agreeable to, or inconsistent with it in whole or in part. I wish to hold that there is nothing which the Church has defined or shall define but what an Apostle, if asked, would have been fully able to answer and would have answered, as the Church has answered, the one answering by inspiration, the other from its gift of infallibility; and that the Church never will be able to answer, or has been able to answer, what the Apostle could not answer, e.g. whether the earth is stationary or not, or whether a republic is or is not better than a monarchy. The differences between them being that an Apostle could answer questions at once, but the Church answers them intermittently, in times & seasons, often delaying and postponing, according as she is guided by her Divine Instructor; and secondly and on the other hand, that the Church does in fact make answers which the Apostles did not make, and in one sense did not know, though they would have known them, i.e. made present to their consciousness, and made those answers, had the questions been asked. (“Letter to Flanagan,” in Theological Papers, p. 158)

Meditation

This glorious octave of Pentecost brings to mind the gift of the Faith - the Catholic Faith - handed on by the Apostles and their successors, the bishops and their helpers, presbyters and deacons, and the lay faithful who together with our beloved clergy have the responsibility to be pure vessels through whom the Holy Ghost instructs, forms and elevates souls.

The gift of the Faith and the gift of faith are gifts of the Holy Ghost [CCC687], the Holy Spirit

... who reveals God, makes known to us Christ, his Word, his living Utterance, but the Spirit does not speak of himself. The Spirit who "has spoken through the prophets" makes us hear the Father's Word, but we do not hear the Spirit himself. We know him only in the movement by which he reveals the Word to us and disposes us to welcome him in faith. The Spirit of truth who "unveils" Christ to us "will not speak on his own." Such properly divine self-effacement explains why "the world cannot receive [him], because it neither sees him nor knows him," while those who believe in Christ know the Spirit because he dwells with them.

Prayer

Come, Holy Ghost, Mentor of souls, Advocate for the vulnerable, Health of the afflicted, Courage for the persecuted, Love of the Father and the Son, we humbly beseech Thee to make Thy home in our hearts, and ennoble our minds that we may grow in the knowledge and love of Christ. When our days are done, may we be welcomed into the loving embrace of the Most Holy Trinity - Father, [+] Son and Thee, Holy Ghost - that we may rest in divine peace and we may also enjoy forever the blissful company of the angels and saints. Amen.