21 Things We Do When We Make the Sign of the Cross
STEPHEN BEALE
he Sign of the Cross is a simple gesture yet a profound expression of faith for both Catholic and Orthodox Christians. As Catholics, it’s something we do when we enter a church, after we receive Communion, before meals, and every time we pray. But what exactly are we doing when we make the Sign of the Cross? Here are 21 things:
1. Pray.
We begin and end our prayers with the Sign of the Cross, perhaps not realizing that the sign is itself a prayer. If prayer, at its core, is “an uprising of the mind to God,” as St. John Damascene put it , then the Sign of the Cross assuredly qualifies. “No empty gesture, the sign of the cross is a potent prayer that engages the Holy Spirit as the divine advocate and agent of our successful Christian living,” writes Bert Ghezzi.
2. Open ourselves to grace.
As a sacramental, the Sign of the Cross prepares us for receiving God’s blessing and disposes us to cooperate with His grace, according to Ghezzi.
3. Sanctify the day.
As an act repeated throughout the key moments of each day, the Sign of the Cross sanctifies our day. “At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign,” wrote Tertullian .
4. Commit the whole self to Christ.
In moving our hands from our foreheads to our hearts and then both shoulders, we are asking God’s blessing for our mind, our passions and desires, our very bodies. In other words, the Sign of the Cross commits us, body and soul, mind and heart, to Christ. (I’m paraphrasing this Russian Orthodox writer.) “Let it take in your whole being—body, soul, mind, will, thoughts, feelings, your doing and not-doing—and by signing it with the cross strengthen and consecrate the whole in the strength of Christ, in the name of the triune God,” said twentieth century theologian Romano Guardini.
5. Recall the Incarnation.
Our movement is downward, from our foreheads to our chest “because Christ descended from the heavens to the earth,” Pope Innocent III wrote in his instructions on making the Sign of the Cross. Holding two fingers together—either the thumb with the ring finger or with index finger—also represents the two natures of Christ.
6. Remember the Passion of Our Lord.
Fundamentally, in tracing out the outlines of a cross on ourselves, we are remembering Christ’s crucifixion. This remembrance is deepened if we keep our right hand open, using all five fingers to make the sign—corresponding to the Five Wounds of Christ.
7. Affirm the Trinity.
In invoking the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we are affirming our belief in a triune God. This is also reinforced by using three fingers to make the sign, according to Pope Innocent III.
8. Focus our prayer on God.
One of the temptations in prayer is to address it to God as we conceive of Him—the man upstairs, our buddy, a sort of cosmic genie, etc. When this happens, our prayer becomes more about us than an encounter with the living God. The Sign of the Cross immediately focuses us on the true God, according to Ghezzi: “When we invoke the Trinity, we fix our attention on the God who made us, not on the God we have made. We fling our images aside and address our prayers to God as he has revealed himself to be: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
9. Affirm the procession of Son and Spirit.
In first lifting our hand to our forehead we recall that the Father is the first person the Trinity. In lowering our hand we “express that the Son proceeds from the Father.” And, in ending with the Holy Spirit, we signify that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, according to Francis de Sales.
10. Confess our faith.
In affirming our belief in the Incarnation, the crucifixion, and the Trinity, we are making a sort of mini-confession of faith in words and gestures, proclaiming the core truths of the creed.
11. Invoke the power of God’s name.
In Scripture, God’s name carries power. In Philippians 2:10, St. Paul tells us that “at the name of Jesus knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” And, in John 14:13-14, Jesus Himself said, “And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”
12. Crucify ourselves with Christ.
Whoever wishes to follow Christ “must deny himself” and “take up his cross” as Jesus told the disciples in Matthew 16:24. “I have been crucified with Christ,” St. Paul writes in Galatians 2:19. “Proclaiming the sign of the cross proclaims our yes to this condition of discipleship,” Ghezzi writes.
13. Ask for support in our suffering.
In crossing our shoulders we ask God “to support us—to shoulder us—in our suffering,” Ghezzi writes.
14. Reaffirm our baptism.
In using the same words with which we were baptized, the Sign of the Cross is a “summing up and re-acceptance of our baptism,” according to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
15. Reverse the curse.
The Sign of the Cross recalls the forgiveness of sins and the reversal of the Fall by passing “from the left side of the curse to the right of blessing,” according to de Sales. The movement from left to right also signifies our future passage from present misery to future glory just as Christ “crossed over from death to life and from Hades to Paradise,” Pope Innocent II wrote.
16. Remake ourselves in Christ’s image.
In Colossians 3, St. Paul uses the image of clothing to describe how our sinful natures are transformed in Christ. We are to take off the old self and put on the self “which is being renewed … in the image of its creator,” Paul tells us. The Church Fathers saw a connection between this verse and the stripping of Christ on the cross, “teaching that stripping off our old nature in baptism and putting on a new one was a participation in Christ’s stripping at his crucifixion,” Ghezzi writes. He concludes that we can view the Sign of the Cross as “our way of participating in Christ’s stripping at the Crucifixion and his being clothed in glory at his resurrection.” Thus, in making the Sign of the Cross, we are radically identifying ourselves with the entirety of the crucifixion event—not just those parts of it we can accept or that are palatable to our sensibilities.
17. Mark ourselves for Christ.
In ancient Greek, the word for sign was sphragis , which was also a mark of ownership, according to Ghezzi. “For example, a shepherd marked his sheep as his property with a brand that he called a sphragis ,” Ghezzi writes. In making the Sign of the Cross, we mark ourselves as belong to Christ, our true shepherd.
18. Soldier on for Christ.
The sphragis was also the term for a general’s name that would be tattooed on his soldiers, according to Ghezzi. This too is an apt metaphor for the Christian life: while we can be compared to sheep in the sense of following Christ as our shepherd we are not called to be sheepish. We instead are called to be soldiers of Christ. As St. Paul wrote in Ephesians 6, “Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil. … take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”
19. Ward off the devil.
The Sign of the Cross is one of the very weapons we use in that battle with the devil. As one medieval preacher named Aelfric declared, “A man may wave about wonderfully with his hands without creating any blessing unless he make the sign of the cross. But, if he do, the fiend will soon be frightened on account of the victorious token.” In another statement, attributed to St. John Chrysostom, demons are said to “fly away” at the Sign of the Cross “dreading it as a staff that they are beaten with.” (Source: Catholic Encyclopedia.)
20. Seal ourselves in the Spirit.
In the New Testament, the word
sphragis , mentioned above, is also sometimes translated as seal, as in 2 Corinthians 1:22, where St. Paul writes that, “the one who gives us security with you in Christ and who anointed us is God; he has also put his seal upon us and given the Spirit in our hearts as a first installment.” In making the Sign of the Cross, we are once again sealing ourselves in the Spirit, invoking His powerful intervention in our lives.
21. Witness to others.
As a gesture often made in public, the Sign of the Cross is a simple way to witness our faith to others. “Let us not then be ashamed to confess the Crucified. Be the Cross our seal made with boldness by our fingers on our brow, and on everything; over the bread we eat, and the cups we drink; in our comings in, and goings out; before our sleep, when we lie down and when we rise up; when we are in the way, and when we are still,”
wrote St. Cyril of Jerusalem .
Sources include:
The Sign of the Cross , by Bert Ghezzi ,
Signs of Life , by Scott Hahn
Tagged as: cross, jesus , prayer, sign of the Cross
112
By Stephen Beale
Stephen Beale is a freelance writer based in Providence, Rhode Island. Raised as an evangelical Protestant, he is a convert to Catholicism. He is a former news editor at GoLocalProv.com and was a correspondent for the New Hampshire Union Leader, where he covered the 2008 presidential primary. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN and the Today Show and his writing has been published in the Washington Times, Providence Journal, the National Catholic Register and on MSNBC.com and ABCNews.com. A native of Topsfield, Massachusetts, he graduated from Brown University in 2004 with a degree in classics and history. His areas of interest include Eastern Christianity, Marian and Eucharistic theology, medieval history, and the saints. He welcomes tips, suggestions, and any other feedback at bealenews at gmail dot com. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/StephenBeale1 it

Cooperating with God’s Will – Advent 2019

Cooperating with God’s Will by Stacey Sumereau

Click here to download audio file.

Click here for a transcript of the video presentation.

Click here for the printable study guide.

Not Registered for the Pray More Healing Retreat? Click here to Register and receive more talks like this one!

Reflective Questions

“And Mary said, ‘Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; may it be done
unto me according to thy word.’ And the angel departed from her.”
— Luke 1:38

1. In this talk we learned more about the text from Luke when the angel Gabriel came to the Blessed Mother and invited her to be the Mother of God. Stacey explains that in order for the angel to come to Mary, her heart would need to be ready to receive him. With that in mind, if God sent an angel to you, would you be ready to receive him? If you were the Blessed Virgin Mary, how would you respond? If you don’t think you would respond like Mary did, then it’s a good opportunity to pray about.

2. Mary was greatly troubled by Gabriel’s greeting which is understandable because of the life-changing news she received when Gabriel told her she would be the Mother of God. Stacey describes a stressful moment in her life that led her to pray to God because she didn’t know what would happen. She explains that Mary is a great model for us in times of crisis because she listens, like she listened to the angel Gabriel. She is scared but she doesn’t run away. Have you had a time in your life when you found yourself praying to God asking for Him to be with you? A time when you were scared and wanted to run away? In moments like these, look to Mary as an example and for guidance.

3. Stacey mentions Imposter Syndrome, that Mary probably thought to herself, “Why me? Why was I chosen?”. Imposter Syndrome can make you think that you have nothing to offer the world. That everything has already be done before and you might as well not even try. But God intentionally choses people who are not powerful. This Advent, think of something that you have felt called to do and do it. Do not wait until tomorrow, just build the first block and see what God has in store for you.

4. Stacey describes some of her spiritual journey and describes the prayer for surrendering she prays every day. This Advent, take some time in prayer to surrender yourself to God and imagine putting yourself into God’s hands. This can open yourself up to receiving guidance from God in your life the way that Mary did when Gabriel came to her and she said, “Yes”.

DECEMBER 16, 2019
Why Was Jesus Born? Here Are Twelve Reasons
STEPHEN BEALE
During Lent, reflecting on the reasons why Jesus died is a fruitful exercise in devotion.
Likewise, during Advent and as we approach Christmas, we ought to wonder why Christ was born.
The answer isn’t as obvious as you might first think. Two reasons probably leap to the mind for all of us: the cross and Christ’s desire to share in the fullness of our humanity.
No doubt, his birth led to his death and, likewise, He participated in our humanity by virtue of being born.
But consider this: Adam was fully human without having a human birth and died a true human death. Yet he was never ‘born.’
If Jesus, the second Adam, had been like the first one He still would have been fully human. He would have thirsted, hungered, and wept like us. He would have died a fully human death on the cross. The question is, what did Jesus achieve by being born that would not have happened had He been like the first Adam?
Here are twelve reasons why Christ chose to be born.

1. Confirm His humanity.
   As stated above, because of Adam, Jesus could certainly have been fully human without a birth. But his birth has the added benefit of confirming the reality of His humanity. The fact that He was born is an indisputable sign of His authentic humanity.
2. Share in the fullness of the human experience.
   By being born, Jesus shared in experiences that He otherwise would not have. He knew what it was like to be a child. And, what’s more, because of His divinity, He was fully conscious of the experience of being an unborn infant. As a result, He has a radically profound awareness of our experience of helplessness and utter dependence on another.
   Moreover, it means that Christ can, in a special way, relate to unborn infants who never experience birth due to abortion. Christ came for them too.
3. Remind us that faith is a journey.
   That faith is a journey might seem self-evident to all of us. As Catholics, we believe that salvation takes root in faith, which grows and develops through love. It is process, not a point in time. This is in contrast to many evangelical Protestants who claim that they have been ‘saved,’ as if it was a past one-time event. It is fitting Christ’s redemption mission was truly a journey from childhood to the cross because it mirrors the long way that all of us have to go.
4. Show us that humility is the way.
   In The City of God , St. Augustine says humility is the way to heaven. Christ showed us the way by ‘humbling himself, even to the point of death on a cross’ (to paraphrase Philippians 2:8). The Incarnation prefigures the Passion. Indeed, as another writer on this site recently put it , “It was not so much that His birth cast a shadow on His life, and thus led to His death; it was rather that the Cross was there from the beginning, and it cast its shadow backward to His birth.”
5. Enter into the story of Israel.
   By being born, Jesus became a member of a nation in a particular time and place. He became Jewish. That means that God entered Israel’s story from within, redeemed and elevated it, and invited all of us to share in it. Christ’s birth into the Jewish nation ensures that the Old Testament became part of the Christian Scriptures.
   Yes, if we accept the hypothetical scenario posted above—that Jesus could have come fully grown as Adam—then we could argue that He also could have come as a Jewish man. But His birth makes Him a part of the Jewish story in a way He otherwise would not have been. It means He is a part of a genealogy. And it makes the Old Testament an indispensable part of the fabric of Christian faith.
6. Enter into the human story.
   Likewise, being born ensured that Christ, entered the human story from within. He was, so to speak, truly an insider. Had Christ simply descended in human form from heaven, or been formed from the dust, He would still have been fully human, but He would not have shared in the human story in the same way.
7. Rebuild humanity from the ground up.
   Christ came to give the human race a new beginning, to restore us to our original greatness. The fact that He was born shows that this restoration will be a complete renovation. Christ went back to square one so to speak, to the earliest possibly starting point, the fertilized egg.
8. Remind us that we need to be born again.
   The Church teaches that baptism is necessary for salvation. To be baptized is to be ‘born again.’ Once again, Christ, showed us the way by being born Himself.
9. Give us Himself.
   Yes, He gave Himself to us on the cross. But Christ also gave Himself to us in another way in His birth. It offers us another way to encounter Christ. In his work, On the Incarnation of the Word, St. Athanasius says the variety of experiences Christ underwent ensures He has many ways of reaching out to man:
   For this cause He was both born and appeared as Man, and died, and rose again, dulling and casting into the shade the works of all former men by His own, that in whatever direction the bias of men might be, from thence He might recall them, and teach them of His own true Father.
   As St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:22 , he has become ‘all things to all.’ How much more Christ!
10. Give us His mother.
    The fact of His birth means that Christ has also given us His mother. We owe our ‘holy Queen, Mother of mercy … our life, our sweetness, and our hope’ to the fact that Christ was born. No birth, no Mary. And let us not fall into the Protestant trap of thinking of Mary as some sort of surrogate birth mother—present merely to give birth and nothing else. As the gospels make clear, she was His true mother, continuing to care for Him as a child and accompany Him in His ministry.
11. Give us the Holy Spirit.
    As Luke 1 makes clear, Jesus was conceived through the Holy Spirit. The implications of this are incredible: it means that humanity cooperated with God in an extraordinarily profound way. Mary gives us hope that all of us can cooperate with the stirrings of the Holy Spirit.
12. Point to the Father.
    The fact that Jesus was born reflects His eternal begetting by the Father. This is why it is so fitting that the Second Person of the Trinity be the one to assume humanity. Church Father St. John Damascene affirmed this truth in The Orthodox Faith :
    We reverence His two generations, one from the Father before time and beyond cause and reason and time and nature, and one in the end for our sake, and like to us and above us; for our sake because it was for our salvation, like to us in that He was man born of woman at full time, and above us because it was not by seed, but by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Virgin Mary, transcending the laws of parturition.
    In the Summa Theologica , St. Thomas Aquinas makes a similar point:
    [I]n Christ there is a twofold nature: one which He received of the Father from eternity, the other which He received from His Mother in time. Therefore we must needs attribute to Christ a twofold nativity: one by which He was born of the Father from all eternity; one by which He was born of His Mother in time.
    Conclusion
    It is clear, then, that in being born, Christ gave us so much: a fresh start, a new hope, a mother, Himself, and an invitation to participate in the Triune life of God. Luke 1 tells us that in the conception of Jesus, the ‘power of the Most High’ overshadowed Mary. The wonder of the Incarnation is something veiled to us; the critical moment occurs within the shadows. Truly, such a great work is beyond our ability to see directly. But its light continues to illumine our lives today.
    Tagged as: Advent , Incarnation ,
    Nativity

How to be a Handmaid of the Lord,
Like Mary
On December 12, we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and recall, in the Gospel reading at Mass, the story of the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38). Mary became a pure vessel in which God dwelt during the nine months of pregnancy. Her “yes” to the special vocation of serving the kingdom of God as the mother of the Messiah did not end when her Son died on the cross. She became mother to the whole Church.
God planned her vocation at the beginning of our story in Genesis, when he told the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers” (Gen. 3:15). She said yes to that vocation when she said to the angel Gabriel and to God, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to Your word” (Luke 1:38).
To get a deeper understanding of what her fiat, her “yes” entailed — and what happens when we say “yes” to God — we need to look at the word “handmaid.” What did she mean by that? According to the dictionary, a “handmaid” is someone whose essential function is to assist. ASSIST! Not: Take charge of. Not: Become the Savior of. Not: Be such a good priest or lay minister or religious brother/sister that people admire you and give you the credit for a job well done.
An assistant is often called the employer’s “right hand” or, more literally, an extension of the employer’s hand.
When I am given an assignment by God, such as “Write a book about … ” or “Give a retreat about … “, my first inclination is to kick into high gear all the organizational and leadership skills in which God has endowed me and trained me. When I see someone wandering into darkness and God nudges me to intervene, my strong sense of caring moves me to action, and if I don’t see results fast enough (by my definition of it), I start assuming that I’m not trying hard enough and must push into higher gear.
None of this is being a handmaid of the Lord. None of this is being an extension of God’s hand. It’s me being me, stretching out my own hand to see how far I can make it reach. Let’s consider how Mary modeled the assistant’s job:
(1) First and foremost, to willingly become someone’s handmaid requires great trust in the person (or God) who is going to be the master. As Pope John Paul the Great wrote in his Encyclical Letter Redemptoris Mater (Mother of the Redeemer) , paragraph 13: “Mary uttered this fiat in faith. In faith she entrusted herself to God without reserve and ‘devoted herself totally as the handmaid of the Lord to the person and work of her Son’ (Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium , para. 56).”
(2) Mary left the consequences of her “yes” in God’s hands. She did not make her “yes” conditional, as in “Okay, Archangel Gabe, but only if you explain to Joseph why I’m pregnant and he’s not the father” or “Just make sure the townsfolk don’t stone me to death or even criticize me for getting pregnant without Joseph.”
(3) She made a complete commitment to align herself with God. He was free to do with her as he willed. She did not second guess him. Nor did she offer her own opinion about where the baby should be born or what should be done with the animals or what kind of visitors they should get. This is what it means to be an extension of God’s hand. We are not the hand. We are not God.
(4) By choosing to say “yes” she opened herself to receive all the help she would ever need from God to fulfill her vocation. It was not Mary who convinced Joseph to go through with the marriage instead of divorcing her; it was God who sent Joseph an angel in a dream.
(5) Her consent came from true humility — the same kind of humility that her Son would have in consenting to the crucifixion. Such willingness lets go of all desire for self-comfort and personal gain. It is a total giving of self, an altruism that comes from knowing that God’s goodness is far greater than our own best efforts.
(6) Being the Lord’s assistant is a partnership with the Holy Spirit, who is the “handmaid” or servant of the other two members of the Blessed Trinity in carrying out all divine operations. The transformation of Mary’s “yes” into an actual pregnancy required the servanthood of the Holy Spirit. Mary cooperated with the Holy Spirit “by her obedience, faith, hope and burning charity in the Savior’s work of restoring supernatural life to souls” ( Lumen Gentium , para. 62). A good handmaid is more than just an obedient servant; faith, hope and love provide the motivation in union with the Holy Spirit.
(7) Giving consent meant not only allowing God to do things to her , but also doing things for God . As his handmaid, she put herself into the position of being done unto. He did not order her around or abuse this position in any way, but he did put her into some very difficult situations. Certainly it was not easy traveling on a donkey to Bethlehem in the last month of pregnancy. Giving birth in a chilly, dirty stable without her mother’s help was probably not the way she had imagined this special moment would be. And fleeing to Egypt instead of returning home with the baby was a very disappointing and challenging time. Yet, she let God do this to her because she had meant it when she said she’d be his handmaid. At the same time, she was doing it all for God out of tremendous love for him.
(8) Mary’s “yes” united her to both the intentions and actions of God. His intentions became her intentions. His actions became her actions. The Father intended to redeem the world through his Son; Mary intended to redeem the world through her Son in accordance with his plan as it unfolded. The Father let his Son die for our sins; Mary let go of her Son as she watched him die, even though she did not yet fully understand the plan. God was in charge, and Mary united herself to whatever he did.
(9) A good handmaid listens closely to what the master wants. Mary had said, “Let it be done to me according to Your WORD.” She was a good listener. “Through faith Mary continued to hear and to ponder that word, in which there became ever clearer, in a way ‘which surpasses knowledge’ (Eph. 3:19), the self-revelation of the living God. Thus in a sense Mary as Mother became the first ‘disciple’ of her Son” ( Redemptoris Mater , para. 20).
(10) Since a handmaid of the Lord is a disciple of Christ, a handmaid is also a true follower. It’s not hard to figure out what God wants of us because Jesus is leading us to do the same things that he did (see John 14:12). In Redemptoris Mater , paragraph 41, we read: “She who at the Annunciation called herself the ‘handmaid of the Lord’ remained throughout her earthly life faithful to what this name expresses. In this she confirmed that she was a true ‘disciple’ of Christ, who strongly emphasized that his mission was one of service: the Son of Man ‘came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Matt. 20:28).
Today, as Queen of Heaven, Mary still continues to serve as God’s handmaid. As Pope John Paul the Great added in paragraph 41, “The glory of serving does not cease to be her royal exaltation: assumed into heaven, she does not cease her saving service, which expresses her maternal mediation ‘until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect’ ( Lumen Gentium , para. 62).
Like Mary’s service, our ministries do not end when we leave the earth. We would do well to give our full “yes” now to our vocations as handmaids (for the guys: use the word “hand-servants”), because in one way or another, we’ll be doing it in front of God’s face when heaven is our home.
Let us rely on Mary’s ministry of being God’s handmaid whenever we need his helping hand to reach us. And let us allow her to teach us how to do the same for others.
To read the full Encyclical Letter “Redemptoris Mater”, go to: ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/JP2MOTHE.HTM.
How can you be God’s hand touching the lives of those around you? Are you trying to control it and do things your way? Have you avoided doing a good deed that Jesus would have done, something he could do through you now? Listen to what he is asking you to do for him and say, “Lord, let it be done to me according to Your will; I am your handmaid (or hand-servant).”