Our People

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

In April 1945, an American artillery unit in a village near Siegburg were clearing out German soldiers after the surrender of the village. The local people had heard terrible tales of cruelty on the part of the Russians as they passed through German towns and uppermost in their minds was the question: how will these Americans treat us?

 

The Americans began a thorough, house-to-house search for weapons and combatants. Two soldiers armed with pistols came to a house and stopped short in the living room before a hand-carved family altar. When they went into the bedroom they found there a beautiful crucifix. The soldiers noticed the cross, stopped, took off their steel helmets, changed automatics from right hand to left, and respectfully made the Sign of the Cross.

 

As a member of the family later related, that household feared no longer, for the Sign of the Cross is the salute of a true follower of Christ, whether conqueror or conquered, whether Axis or Allied, German or American, European or Australian. It is the countersign of Christians, the special salute of Catholics.

 

The Sign of the Cross is one of the most important and frequently used sacramentals. According to tradition, it was first used by Our Lord at his Ascension: he blessed his disciples with that sign as he returned to the Father. Our Christian journey begins at Baptism when, still outside the church, the priest, parents and godparents claim the child for Christ by making the Sign of the Cross on the child’s forehead. At the climax of the ceremony, water is poured over the child in the names of the Trinity, showing the child is now a child of God the Father, a brother or sister of God the Son, and a temple of God the Holy Spirit.

 

At Confession, the priest makes the sign over us at the point of absolution and again pours absolution over the penitent in the names of the Trinity, showing the penitent is now restored to innocence by God the Father, redeemed by the Passion of God the Son and inspired by the gifts of God the Holy Spirit giving him a new start. At Confirmation, Ordination and the Sacrament of the Sick, we are anointed with holy oils applied with the Sign of the Cross. Couples are blessed with the Sign of the Cross in matrimony, parishioners are blessed at the end of Mass (three times if their Parish Priest is a Bishop!) with the Sign of the Cross, and the bodies of the deceased are sprinkled with holy water and the Sign of the Cross at Funerals. Each time we are recalling our baptism and showing the place and power of the Holy Trinity at the most crucial moments of our lives.

 

All Christian liturgy is, of course, a song of praise to the Trinitarian mystery. Most of our prayer is addressed to God the Father, through God the Son, in God the Holy Spirit. The Sign of the Cross is our most simple and our most solemn invocation, used not just in the public ritual of the Church, but also in the private prayer of every faithful Catholic. People make this sign for themselves with water on the way into church in remembrance of their baptism. Parents make the sign over their children and in due course they teach them how to do it for themselves. We make it as we begin our prayers, or as we are passing by a church, or at grace before or thanksgiving after meals, in the face of temptation or difficulty, in danger or at the point of death. It is even fashionable today amongst some sports stars to make the Sign of the Cross before or after making some crucial score!

 

What’s this Sign of the Cross all about? From birth to death it is a holy sign, a holy ceremony that continually reminds Catholics of the source from which all spiritual blessings come from: the cross. Yet interestingly, we do NOT say “In the name of Christ Crucified, and of Christ Dead, and of Christ Buried and of Christ Risen”. Although it is a symbol of Christ we use, it is the name of all three persons of the Trinity that we utter. It seems to confuse the sign of Christ’s redemptive act with the names of the Holy Trinity whose Feast we celebrate today.

 

But it is the cross which best reveals the power of all three persons of the Trinity in our lives and grace won for us on the cross is poured out upon humanity from the love that overflows between those three Persons. Every time we raise our minds and our hearts to God, we enter into the Holy Trinity’s eternal dialogue of love. The entire development of divine revelation is directed to the manifestation of the God-Who-Is-Love, of the Communion-Who-is-God. This doctrine and prayer concerns, first of all, the internal life of God: a Unity of Three Persons, in perfect communion from all eternity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But God does not tell us this about Himself as way of boasting or self-advertising, as if he wanted us to admire Him or be mystified by Him. He tells us this about Himself in order to call all of us to share His own life and to enter into communion with Him.

 

To the universal call to holiness, each of three divine Persons makes His own specific contribution. The Father is the source of all holiness; the Son is the mediator of all salvation; and the Holy Spirit is the One who animates and sustains the journey of man towards full and definitive communion with God. By touching our forehead as a sign of our intellect, then our breast as a sign of our will, then our shoulders as sign of all our strength, we effectively reconsecrate our whole selves to the Holy Trinity – our thoughts, our attitudes, our body and soul, every part of us, all at once. By using the names of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, we recall that our God is a Trinitarian One. By using the Sign of the Cross, we recall that the Son of God died on the cross for us all. Before Calvary the cross was a sign of disgrace; but by Christ it was made a thing of glory and power.

 

In the Southern Hemisphere, the Southern Cross stands as a luminous sign of God’s overarching grace and blessing. For tens of thousands of years, the peoples of the Pacific lived under the protection of the cross without fully understanding its significance, and when the missionaries came it was to explain that which was already in their skies. That same Southern Cross hangs dramatically over all of us in Our Lady Star of the Sea Parish Church. It is a symbol of the universe and a sign of our creation, of our redemption, of our destiny.

 

When we profess our faith in a few moments time we will say “We believe in One God, the Father Almighty… We believe in One Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God… We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life.” The Creed is the most complete formula of our faith; but the Sign of the Cross is a miniature Creed. It too says: I believe, in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

 

So we use the Sign of the Cross to stir up our faith, our hope and our love. It professes our faith that God is one and God is three, and that the second Person of the Trinity died for all. It strengthens our hope because that same cross wins eternity for us. It feeds our charity because that cross joins us to the limitless compassion of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And it identifies us as Catholics, seeking to build up God’s kingdom of life and love, justice and reconciliation, truth and peace on earth. That is why that German family felt so secure, so much safer, as soon as they saw those American soldiers make the sacred sign. It identified those two ferocious young men, with their uniform and weapons and strange language, as genuine children of God.

 

We too should use it frequently, use it thoughtfully, use it lovingly, for it is the source of countless blessings. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!