The Sign of the Cross

Fifth Thursday after Pentecost

Thursday is Prayer and Spirituality day on the blog. My Spiritual Director, Justin, has me doing the Ignatian Daily Examen. I'll talk about it next Thursday, after I've had a little more practice doing it. The instruction for the end of the Daily Examen is to make an indication to God of your closing. The indication can be one of several things. If you have lit a candle, it would be putting out the candle. If you have a center of your home sacred space, it can be bowing to that center. It can be singing a verse of a favorite hymn. Or it can be any one of a number of other things, or something you create on your own.

Yes, there is an app for this. I was reading the instructions on the app for today (or maybe I read this in the book). In addition to the above listed it said, "or if you're Catholic, you can make the sign of the cross." That gave me a little rise in blood pressure. Since when is the sign of the cross the sole property of Catholics. First of all, Eastern Orthodox have always done it, though they do it differently. Instead of going up-down-left-right like Catholics, they go up-down-right-left. Second, many Protestants, especially Episcopalians, do it. I've been doing it for a little over 50 years. I do it at the end of my prayers. Around 1980, I started doing it in churches where I was preaching, when I pronounced the Benediction. I saw the pastor of the second largest church in the Holston Conference, First Centenary in Chattanooga, did it. If he could do it, I could do it (and he, Gordon Goodgame, went on to become a bishop).

Should you do it? Though the following is not my usual mantra, nor is it a Bible verse, my answer to that question is, "If it feels good, do it." 

How do you do it. There must be 50 ways, and I don't know them all. I hold my thumb, index finger, and middle finger together up--signifying the Trinity, and my fourth finger and pinky together down--signifying the two natures, divine and human, of Christ. But do it any way you want. For Methodists there are no rules on this. 

Before I get to the meaning of the sign of the cross, two other things to mention. First, don't say, "Crossing yourself." It's "making the sign of the cross."

Second, why did Protestants stop making the sign of the cross/ I don't have a for sure accurate answer to that question, but I suspect that the explanation is because Catholics do it. And for Luther, Calvin, and the other sixteenth century Protestants, just about anything Catholics did, they didn't do. If any one has a more historically accurate answer to that question, let me know. 

Finally, what does it mean? It can mean different things to different people. To me it means that I'm marking myself with the cross of Christ. I'm marking myself with the sign of what my Lord did for me. I'm claiming for myself the faith that his life, death, and resurrection began, and that has been passed down to me through countless generations of the faithful that have gone before. 

Faithfully,

Christian