Be Promiscuous with the Sign of the Cross!

We often hear as a traditional invocation, especially on the lips of Catholic priests, “Let us begin, as we begin all things, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

But why should we begin all things in this way? What is it about the Sign of the Cross that makes it not only a suitable but a universal commencement?

Martin Luther is well known to have enjoined his people to make the sign of the cross, and for several reasons, the first being that with such a prayer we stand in defiance of the devil. In this sense, it is to put on the shield, the breastplate, the armor of God (Eph. 6:11).

But this can only be a secondary reason, just as the evil of the devil is always a privation and so secondary to the more fundamental reality of the good.

What is the good of the Sign of the Cross from which its significance as sign of defiance follows? For that we must once again turn to St. Paul, in 1 Timothy, where he condemns “deceitful spirits” and “liars” who enjoin a rejection of marriage and abstinence from food. Paul tells us these things “God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.” In response to God’s first initiative of giving what is good, we reply with thanks. Paul continues, “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; for then it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:2-5).

What God creates is good. He created it for the sake of our returning His goodness with thanks. This act of donation and response, procession and return, forthcoming and offering back is the fundamental answer to the question, “Why creation?” The whole economy of existence is just this circuit of relations.

But Paul does not merely describe the relation of giving and thanking as fundamental to creation, to being as such. Creation itself is transformed by the fulfillment of this relationship. What God has created, has made a good of nature, in being offered back in thanksgiving ceases to be a mere natural good. It becomes a part of the New Creation, it becomes “consecrated.”

We are creatures of God. Through baptism we are consecrated, we ourselves become participants in the New Creation. Through our actions of prayer and thanksgiving, one thing after another, gift after gift, individual after individual, has its own interior nature transformed. By our activity, we set about with food and drink and all things else, consecrating them and making them a part of the New Creation.

If I merely eat and drink, I have natural food to nourish my natural body. But if I pray over my meal in thanksgiving, the whole meal becomes an act of prayer. Every bite, every taste, becomes a hymn of praise to God. The world itself has become different.

The sign of the cross, often spoken, sometimes conferred by a pure gesture of the body, turns our embodied movement into prayer. The body itself becomes a new creation, a participant in the spirit. As we cross ourselves, when walking past a Church, before setting out of doors, before doing something of natural importance—for each of these things existence itself is transformed. What was mere created being becomes itself a consecrated reality.

Be promiscuous with the sign of the cross. Let the shadow of your hand pass over everything, until all of creation, good in its being, has been raised up and consecrated by our thanksgiving and become a fit participant in a new heaven and a new earth.

*Originally delivered at the 13th annual Eighth Day Symposium Festal Banquet on January 13, 2023.