The Cross is Life in the Holy Trinity

Saint Bernadette was, throughout her life, very strict about helping people make the sign of the Cross. She insisted that we mark ourselves with the Cross very deliberately and consciously. Slowly move your right hand from your forehead to waist ('In the name of the Father, and of the Son...') and to each shoulder ('and of the Holy... Spirit. Amen'). Prayer was not to be rushed, and so we shouldn't rush our introduction to prayer as Catholics. Thus we enable ourselves to enter more fully into what we are saying, praying and professing with our lips and actions: that we are sealed with the Life of God through the Cross of Christ.

This Sunday the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. What does this mean? It means that we belong to the Eternal God and cooperate in the saving work of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. As Jesus teaches us in the gospel, we have to take this in small doses throughout our life's journey and grow deeper into this Mystery each day. Saint Bernadette knew this so well as she carried the Cross in illness and quiet faithfulness: we are being made into Christ through the Cross we bear.


This text will help us understand and recommit ourselves to what it means to be part of the Trinity:

Because we sign ourselves in the form of a cross, this traditional Catholic gesture is probably more readily connected with Christ and his paschal mystery than with the mystery of the Trinity. Yet the words of the gesture—"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit"—clearly connect this gesture with the whole triune mystery of God.

We begin and end each Mass with the sign of the cross. When we make it at the beginning of Mass, we are prompted to remember that this celebration is God's invitation to be in God's triune presence. Mass isn't primarily our celebration, but God's gift of self to us in which we are transformed into being more perfect images of the Body of Christ. It is well that we make this sign slowly and deliberately at the beginning of Mass and ask God to help us surrender ourselves to this great mystery of God's presence to us.

When we are blessed and sent forth at the end of Mass, we are prompted to remember that we are dismissed to be God's presence to all those we meet in the ordinary circumstances of our daily lives. By signing ourselves with the crss in blessing, we also make a commitment to live in such a way that others might see the goodness in us that is God's presence. Further, this signing and blessing remind us that in our ordinary actions we are to carry on the work of our Triune God; that is, to re-create the world in newness of life, to redeem our world from the evil that besets it, and to bring God's glory and holiness to all we meet. Through the indwelling God we participate in God's loving work on behalf of all. (Living Liturgy, 2009, p. 147)