Though I was raised Catholic and attended Mass regularly, received the sacraments, and had faithful parents, I didn’t really start praying from the heart until I started having children of my own.
And by praying from the heart, I mean sitting in silence with the Lord and speaking to Him straight from the heart. No structured prayer. No plan per se. Just sitting in His presence and inviting Him into conversation. Sharing my life with Him. Thanking Him. Asking Him questions. Laying my worries and cares at His feet. And then leaving room for Him to respond.
I’m not really sure why I began to pray this way when I did. Whatever the reason, it was God’s grace that moved me to this type of intimacy with my Lord.
As a Catholic, I have always begun prayers by making the sign of the cross. And while I knew what I was doing, suffice it to say that I made the sign of the cross countless times without thinking about why I was doing it.
It wasn’t until I began to pray from the heart that this sign that had become routine for me finally became a very devout prayer in and of itself.
And that’s essentially what the sign of the cross is for Catholics – a prayer.
When we make the sign of the cross, we are invoking the Holy Trinity – the very thing that makes Christians Christian. And when I make the sign of the cross, I picture my Father in Heaven, His Son my Savior, and the Holy Spirit, whom I am inviting to dwell within me.
But it’s not just a prayer.
Three things happen when we make this sign over our bodies:
We are recalling our own Baptism – when we became children of God.
We are calling to mind the reality of the crucifixion and remembering God’s great love for us by sending His son to die for our salvation.
We are marking ourselves as disciples, accepting our own crosses as we follow Jesus Christ in our daily lives.
And the earliest Christians marked themselves with the sign of the cross, too.
Tertullian, one of the early Church Fathers who wrote in the second and third centuries said, “In all our travels and movements, in all our coming in and going out, in putting on our shoes, at the bath, at the table, in lighting our candles, in lying down, in sitting down, whatever employment occupies us, we mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross” (Source).
John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople in the fourth century, said, “When, therefore, you sign yourself, think of the purpose of the cross, and quench any anger and all other passions. Consider the price that has been paid for you” (Source).
As with so many things within Catholic culture, our signs and gestures are outward reflections of an innermost reality.
Over the years, in my walk with the Lord, my prayer life has transformed my heart – prayer by prayer, always beginning and ending with the sign of the cross.
It’s like an anchor that keeps me grounded in this Truth – that I am a child of God who is loved beyond measure and a disciple of Jesus Christ the King.