SIGN OF THE CROSS

Homily for Trinity Sunday 7 June 2020, John 3:16-18

On the Feast of the Trinity, three years ago, I started my homily with the sign of the cross. Without gesturing, I said, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.” Almost automatically, everybody in the congregation made the gesture of the sign of the Cross. So I told them, “I wasn’t really asking you to make the gesture of the sign of the cross. I just wanted to invoke the name of God for us Catholic Christians, as we celebrate today the feast of the Holy Trinity of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I wanted to make you a little more conscious of the fact that that the sign of the cross is actually the sign of the Trinity. “

But I do understand that for most of us, Catholics, this beautiful tradition of signing ourselves with the familiar gesture has become almost automatic. When we do it reverently, we point at our forehead for the Father, at our heart for the Son, and at left and right shoulders for the Holy Spirit. Often we’re not even conscious of what we do anymore. I see jeepney drivers and passers-by making the sign of the cross as they pass by the Church. I see people performing the gesture before eating, before sleeping, before a meeting, before answering a test or doing a difficult task, or or even before darting off for a marathon. Even boxers do it in the boxing ring; someone we all know very well in the Philippines used to do it before each fight. He even wore the rosary around his neck.

We all know, of course, that he has stopped doing it already. Perhaps it was because he did not really know what it was for, in the first place. Perhaps his newfound fellows in the evangelical Church had dissuaded him from doing it because it had every semblance of a superstitious gesture, something like a lucky charm. I do not blame him for this. I’ve also felt a bit queasy myself, because when the guy he’s fighting is also a Catholic, both of them make the same sign of the cross, and then start beating each other up violently. Is it possible that sometimes making the gesture can have the semblance of blasphemy against the name of God, which that sign represents.

I invite you, dear fellow Catholic Christians, to restore that beautiful sign to its original sense and meaning. We do it precisely to consecrate ourselves, our bodies, our activities, our food, our every endeavor, in God’s name. And so we say, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The gesture is in fact already a complete prayer in itself. When we do it before partaking of our food, we’re already saying, “We partake of this food in God’s holy name.” That is why it makes sense why all our liturgies begin and end with it. We engage in acts of worship in the name of God.

But does not the Lord’s Prayer say we must “hallow God’s Name”? Yes, hallow (as in halloween), which means “keep holy” or consecrate. But if the activity is meant to destroy, or defraud, or to commit violence against another person, how can it hallow God’s Name? It does the opposite, doesn’t it? It blasphemes God’s Name.

For Jesus, we’re like orphans who have been adopted and given “God’s name”. God has called us to be members of his family. And so he gives us His Holy Name. We have the duty and responsibility never to dishonor this name, never to invoke it in activities that are contrary to God’s holiness. Does the sign of the cross have the same value when performed by a thief who is about to steal, or a criminal who is about to detonate a bomb that will hurt a whole crowd of people? It is blasphemy. It is as blasphemous as an Abu Sayyaf member who cries “Allah hu ‘akbar!” (God is great!) before cutting the throat of his captive because no ransom money had been delivered.

After starting with an invitation to make the sign of the cross invoking the name of God, the priest opens with a greeting that is also Trinitarian. He says, “The GRACE of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the LOVE of the Father, and the COMMUNION of the Holy Spirit be with you!” Take note that, unlike in the sign of the cross, in the priest’s opening greeting, the Son comes first, the Father second, and the Spirit last. How come? It is because it is the Son who has revealed to us the essence of the LOVE of the Father. This love is unconditional. It is not being given as a reward for our good deeds. It is only through Jesus, the Son, that we have been made fully aware of that. The Gospel, from John chapter 3, says, “For God so LOVED the world, he gave us his only Son so that all who believe might not perish but might have eternal life.” In short, the essence of God consists in giving life, not in punishing or condemning.

This is not so clear yet for people who promote a fearful, a wrathful, a vengeful God–who rewards only the righteous and punishes the sinners. Because we all have the tendency to sin, we are afraid of God. In fact, it is a value to be “God-fearing”, even when we know that what the Bible means by fear of God is really “reverential fear”, not “fear in the sense of terror”. What the New Testament emphasizes is LOVE, not FEAR. In fact, the epistle of John says, “Perfect LOVE casts out all fear.”

The Son is associated with GRACE (“The GRACE of our Lord Jesus Christ…”) because He reveals to us the Father as a God whose desire is to save, not to condemn. “God sent His Son into the world not to condemn the world but to save it.” No wonder the Son was named JESUS, from the Hebrew YESHUA, which is a shorter version for YEHOSHUA (Joshua) and YESHAYAHU (Isaiah), which basically means “Yahweh saves”. We are never to associate God with damnation, but rather with salvation! As St. Paul eloquently declares in Romans 8: “Who will condemn us?” It couldn’t be the Father, could it? Remember how the Father “did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all!” It could not be the Son either, could it? “It is Christ who died for us… and who intercedes for us!” Paul ends by confidently saying, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!”

And so we understand why we associate the Son with GRACE. He is the ultimate expression of the LOVE of the Father that is bestowed on us through the Son who died for us “while we were yet sinners.” GRACE is unmerited LOVE.

Finally, why do we associate the Holy Spirit with COMMUNION? Because it is the communion of the Father and the Son that makes it possible for us to be bestowed or gifted with the Holy Spirit. Communion is spiritual union or solidarity; it is that which enables us to enter into fellowship with one another. Communion is what makes community possible. And we can become truly human, strong, noble and beautiful only when we become community, when we build community. I do not mean only the community in the sense of Church or unity among those who profess Christ.

A Christian is always an agent of UNITY and COMMUNITY in the world. Religion is not the only basis of unity and community. If we cannot unite and build community with people because of religious differences, we can always explore other grounds for unity. We can unite around a common purpose, such as for the common good, for the good of the environment, for the protection of the weak and the vulnerable. We can always unite with people of good will, and transcend cultural, racial, linguistic, political, and religious differences. We’re not Catholic if we can have communion only with people of our own faith and beliefs. We’re in fact forfeiting our catholicity if we believe that salvation is exclusively only for us. To be catholic is to believe that God desires the salvation of all humankind. We are not being truly “catholic” if we cannot be instruments of peace, unity, and harmony.

On this Feast Day of the Holy Trinity, let us remind ourselves that the sign of the Cross is the sign of the Trinity. That this beautiful gesture is a prayer. That this sign means we consecrate our lives, our actions, our food, in the holy name of God, who is GRACE, LOVE, and COMMUNION. If we hallow ourselves in the name of God who is Trinity, it means we commit ourselves to becoming agents of GRACE, LOVE, AND COMMUNION in this world.