“For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall
back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry,
“Abba,* Father!” (Romans
8:15)
My
brother and sister have been generous enough to bless their brother the priest
with three nephews who are 6, 3, and 6 months old. Watching them grow up, from a distance, is a
joy. One of the great delights that I
have is watching them pray before we sit down to eat. My oldest nephew is left handed so he starts to
do the sign of the cross with his left hand and gets half way before he notices
that he needs to switch to his right hand to sign himself. The three year old is a whirlwind who does
the sign of the cross as any 3 year old would.
The six month old is too young to do the sign of the cross but according
to my mother, he does pray because since he was a newborn he has always
perfectly crossed his fingers when he’s in his uncle’s arms as if to signal
that he is praying. Only grandmother’s
can pick that up. The sign of the cross
is the first prayer that we learn as children.
It is the simplest prayer and yet the most profound because we recall
our baptism and the fact that we were baptized into a community of love known
as the Holy Trinity. Every time we sign
ourselves we call upon the presence and guidance of a Triune God who has
revealed himself to us as Father, Son, and Spirit. One God yet three distinct persons who are one
“not in the unity of a single person but in a Trinity of one substance” as the liturgy
tells us.
Today’s
solemnity calls us to enter more deeply into the mystery of this community of
love and to reflect that divine presence in our lives. We take the sign of the cross for
granted. Yes, it’s admirable when we
sign ourselves before we eat it, but do we do it haphazardly, as I sometimes
do, or do we do it with the reverence befitting the Divine Presence we have
just invoked? This is where children can
teach us a great deal. Our second
graders who just received their First Communion last month were taught to sign
themselves right after they received the Body of Christ. They do it so reverently that they do not
leave the foot of the altar until the have carefully consumed our Lord and
signed themselves ever so slowly.
Sometimes children grasp the divine better than we do.
Invoking
the Trinity also draws us into the salvific mission of our God who seeks to
draw humanity to himself. As I said
earlier, one God, three persons, and with three distinct missions. The beginning of the Third Eucharistic Prayer
under the old translation said:
“Father…all life, all holiness comes from you through your Son our Lord
Jesus Christ by the working of the Holy Spirit.” We see that everything emanates from the
Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit.
This is how we pray during the Mass, and our lives should be lived as a perpetual
offering to our God as we seek to draw more closely to this divine mystery of
love that is poured out to us by the Blessed Trinity. It is indeed a mystery how our God chose to
reveal himself to us, but it can be as simple as watching a child slowly and
carefully do the sign of the cross. We
call upon our Triune God to be with us, to draw us deeper into this community
of love, and to help us communicate this divine presence to all.
