A guest post by Latif Gaba

The Sign of the Cross: a brief word of encouragement for the Lutheran reader, and anyone else who may be interested.

In our age, when someone is said to be “going through the motions” it is not meant as a compliment. For people like to think that they are being genuine and truthful and spiritual only when they rise above the merely physical. And so it is especially fortunate that one of the most basic and common examples in all of the rich storehouse of the tradition of Christian prayer is a prayer which requires the Christian to go through the motions. There is a wonderfully creation-affirming physicality to Christian worship in general, and this act of devotion in particular. For worship involves more than merely the heart, or the brain, or the reading eyes, or the voice. It involves much more than mere literacy, and it involves more than lip-service. Worship is physical and involves the whole person, created and redeemed by God.

Be bold, go through the motions, and make the Sign of the Cross. In doing so, you confess the integrity of the human person, body and soul. In doing so, you powerfully and quietly proclaim to those around you, family members, classmates, colleagues, unknown bystanders, that the cross of Christ is central to your faith and life, and that you align yourself with millennia of Churchly tradition, including Lutheran tradition. And in doing so, you send a message to the one who needs it most, yourself. You thus remind yourself of what is most important. You need this reminder, and it helps greatly to get it in more than one way. You need to feel it, pressed onto your skin. Along this line, by the way, it helps if once in a while, say, each time you enter the church, you can also make your finger wet in the baptismal font before making the Sign of the Cross.

But some will object, “The Sign of the Cross is not part of my tradition, for it was never practiced in my home, or in my church, my pastor never mentioned it, and my parents did not hand it on to me.” In fact, the Sign of the Cross is your tradition, in several ways. First, it is part of Western Tradition, which means that it is yours to pick up again and reclaim. For as we confess in the Augsburg Confession, “Among us, in large part, the ancient rites are diligently observed. For it is a false and malicious charge that all the ceremonies, all the things instituted of old, are abolished in our churches.” And again, “But it can readily be judged that nothing would serve better to maintain the dignity of ceremonies, and to nourish reverence and pious devotion among the people than if the ceremonies were observed rightly in the churches.” Second, at your Baptism, the Sign of the Cross was imposed upon you literally, and was thus given to you, handed over to you, for life. Third, whether your catechist ever bothered to mention it or just skipped over it, the Sign of the Cross is given to each Lutheran by Martin Luther, our venerable father, who instructs us in his Small Catechism:

“In the morning, when you rise, you shall bless yourself with the holy cross and say: In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

And again:

“In the evening, when you go to bed, you shall bless yourself with the holy cross and say: In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

So if you are a Lutheran, then the Small Catechism is your heritage, and therefore, so also is the Sign of the Cross.

Arguably, the richest of all prayers are those that look the simplest. And so perhaps the richest prayer of all is the Sign of the Cross, for in itself it doesn’t even have any necessary verbal components. In second place would be the Trinitarian invocation (which is normally conjoined with the Sign of the Cross) as it is not even technically a complete sentence. The Sign of the Holy Cross can be a wonderfully rich devotion, when practiced attentively and prayerfully. It is a prayer in itself, for it brings to mind our Baptism, when Christ our crucified Lord washed us of our sin, through the hands and mouth of His consecrated servant, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” So we return anew to the promises of Baptism when we make this ancient gesture. It also brings to mind the Baptismal reality of sacramental Absolution, in which we are brought back to the same grace with the words, “I absolve thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” It also reminds us, quite simply, that we belong to Jesus, that His redemption covers the whole of our person, and the whole of our life, and that our life is shaped by His holy and redemptive cross.

Therefore the Sign of the Cross makes a fitting part of our regular prayer life. It is an appropriate response in any situation where one is in trouble. For it can serve as a call for God’s gracious presence, protection, and help. It is an appropriate act of thanks and joy in times of celebration. And it is appropriate for everything in between, even when you don’t feel much of anything at all, but just want your body and mind united in prayer and devotion. Remember, the Sign of the Cross may seem simple, but it is rich. For it packs into one brief gesture, when employed in faith, so much that one can hardly articulate it all each time. It is like the wedding ring which, when half-consciously touched and turned, reminds a man of his marital relationship, so that this Sign is a tangible reminder that the Church, and each member of the Church, has a holy Redeemer and Lord. He has marked us as His own, and will keep us under His protection. The Sign of the Cross is like the unseen armor and shield that Christ’s warriors don as they head out to battle. It is the silent voice echoing in the arena of life, “Be strong, and play the man,” just as Saint Polycarp heard this word as he was brought into the arena on a fateful day in the middle of the second century. For in Christ we have our being, and in Him, the One Who is True Man, we have our strength and fortitude to withstand the crafts and assaults of the devil. In Him we can take on the world. We know that baptizing with water “signifies that the Old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lusts and, again, a new man daily come forth and arise, who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” The Sign of the Cross can be an invaluable aid in this daily contrition and repentance. The cross stands for the redemptive suffering of Christ, and always implies the resurrection.

When you don’t have much to say, or when you have too much to say, make the Sign of the Cross, and go about your day in joy.