Words often fail where symbolism succeeds, while taken together they frequently make spiritual things more fully grasped. At the center of Christianity are symbols and words that speak to the very essence of what it means to be human. For this reason these symbols and words will persist, even though the glory days of ‘Christendom’ are gone and the church no longer is the purveyor of civil religion.
The most powerful and persistent symbol of Christianity is the cross. It is the universal representation of the ordeal of Jesus and identifying mark of his followers. The cross is the place of cosmic connection. It is the intersection of several dimensions; the meeting place of heaven and earth.
The cross speaks of the union of heaven and earth, spirit and matter. It is a cosmic axis, the cross represents the human form with arms outstretched. The four cardinal points of the cross can be connected the four directions: north, south, east, and west; the four seasons of the yearly cycle; the four elements (fire, water, air, and earth).
As an archetype, the cross stems from the deepest collective levels of the human psyche.It points to a kind of significance that is truly transcendental: because the intersection of its two lines, the cross is a coordinate – used to represent the location of the point in the plane or space. It is a universal symbol of human existence, here and now.
As true as all those aspects of the cross may be, as Christians we see the cross on an intimate spiritual level. It is much more than a memorial. If Jesus had been a human being only, then the cross would be a reminder of a horrible, unjust, untimely death of someone we loved. But that is but one aspect of the cross. The cross is the decisive turning point for humanity. It is the “before and after” point for all of spiritual time.
We make the sign of the cross. We do this in corportate worship and in personal private prayer. With the Sign, we send a visible sign to the world and follow the advice of St. Ephrem of Syria (died A.D. 373):
Mark all your actions with the sign of the life-giving Cross. Do not go out from the door of your house till you have signed yourself with the Cross. Do not neglect that sign whether in eating or drinking or going to sleep, or in the home or going on a journey. There is no habit to be compared with it. Let it be a protecting wall round all your conduct, and teach it to your children that they may earnestly learn the custom.
As you make the sign of the cross, do so with the intention of making these connections to:
God. When we reach up in faith, with hope and trust, we are reaching for God. Like an infant child reaching up with assurance that mom or dad will be there, so we reach out of our selves toward God. The first movement is up toward God, to a higher consciousness, to the source of life and the fount of eternal love. The starting place of the cross is to accept all the love and life that God wants to share with us.
Self. In the spiritual life we must see to our own needs. Unless we first bind our wounds, we cannot be a healer for others. We can only give away what we first possess. No one wants to hear a preacher or teacher words of wisdom unless they have first realized the truth of those words for themselves. To make the second point of the cross is to go deep, to reach into the depths of our human lives and to there understand our own needs, hopes, and desires. Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. We simply cannot hope to love and help others if we have not learned to love and help ourselves. There may be fairies, there may be elves, but God helps those who help themselves.
Others. The first arm of the cross is to reach out in compassion to others. One of the best tools for spiritual growth is service. Most of us have no quarrel with this aspect of the cross. In fact, we sometimes start here, with outreach, when first we need to be converted ourselves. But having had our awareness raised, let us not bypass this clear and obvious mandate of what it means to walk in the way of the cross. Love one another. Break bread together. Make disciples. Preach the Good News of salvation to the brokenhearted. These are not good suggestions. They are the fruit we are to bear for the sake of Christ.
World. The best known verse in the Bible is probably John 3:16, “For God so loved the world…” God loved the world so much that he made the decision to forever become part of it. The incarnation of Jesus means that God is married to creation for all eternity. If God loved the world so much that he sent Jesus to redeem it, then it follows that disciples of Jesus should have a great respect for the world. Not just for the people who live on the planet, for the animals that enrich our lives, for the plant kingdom that gives us oxygen to breathe, and for the oceans and rivers that sustain make life possible.
The Bridgettine Nuns (founded 1370 by St. Birgitta of Sweden to give praise and honor to God) in their Myroure of our Ladye write of the mystical reasons for the practice of making the sign of the cross, and how it summarizes the Incarnation, the Passion, and the Ascension of Jesus:
And then ye bless you with the sygne of the holy crosse, to chase away the fiend with all his deceytes. For, as Chrysostome sayth, wherever the fiends see the signe of the crosse, they flye away, dreading it as a staffe that they are beaten withall. And in thys blessinge ye beginne with youre hande at the hedde downwarde, and then to the lefte side and byleve that our Lord Jesu Christe came down from the head, that is from the Father into erthe by his holy Incarnation, and from the erthe into the left syde, that is hell, by his bitter Passion, and from thence into his Father’s righte syde by his glorious Ascension.
Words often fail where symbolism succeeds, while taken together they frequently make spiritual things more fully grasped. May our words and deeds be more than symbolic, may they unite heaven with earth, and bring human hopes and dreams into alignment with the ways and wonders of the risen Christ.
