The Carpenter
An elderly carpenter
was ready to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the
house-building business to live a more leisurely life with his wife and enjoy
his extended family. He would miss the paycheck each week, but he wanted to
retire. They could get by.
The contractor was
sorry to see his good worker go and asked if he could build just one more house
as a personal favor. The carpenter said yes, but over time it was easy to see
that his heart was not in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used
inferior materials. It was an unfortunate way to end a dedicated career.
When the carpenter
finished his work, his employer came to inspect the house. Then he handed the
front-door key to the carpenter and said, "This is your house... my gift
to you."
The carpenter was
shocked!
What a shame! If he
had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so
differently.
So it is with us. We
build our lives, a day at a time, often putting less than our best into the
building. Then, with a shock, we realize we have to live in the house we have
built. If we could do it over, we'd do it much differently.
But, you cannot go
back. You are the carpenter, God is your employer and every day you hammer a
nail, place a board, or erect a wall. Someone once said, "Life is a
do-it-yourself project." Your attitude, and the choices you make today,
help build the "house" you will live in tomorrow. Build wisely so
that God will please with your works on the final day!
Know
more about Sign of Cross
A term applied to various manual acts, liturgical or devotional in character, which have this at least in
common: that by the gesture of tracing two lines intersecting at right angles
they indicate symbolically the figure of Christ's cross.
Most commonly and properly the words
"sign of the cross" are used of the large cross traced from forehead
to breast and from shoulder to shoulder, such as Catholics are taught to make upon themselves when they begin their prayers, and such also as the priest makes at the foot of the altar when he commences Mass with
the words: "In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti". (At the
beginning of Mass the celebrant makes the sign of the cross by placing his left
hand extended under his breast; then raising his right to his forehead, which
he touches with the extremities of his fingers, he says: In nomine Patris;
then, touching his breast with the same hand, he says: et Filii;
touching his left and right shoulders, he says; et Spiritus Sancti; and
as he joins his hands again adds: Amen.) The same sign recurs frequently
during Mass, e.g. at the words "Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini",
at the "Indulgentiam" after the Confiteor, etc., as also in the Divine Office, for example at the invocation "Deus in adjutorium
nostrum intende", at the beginning of the "Magnificat", the
"Benedictus", the "Nunc Dimittis", and on many other
occasions.
A third variety is represented by the
little cross, generally made with the thumb, which the priest or deacon traces for example upon the book of the Gospels and then
upon his own forehead, lips, and breast at Mass, as also that made upon the
lips in the "Domine labia mea aperies" of the Office, or again upon
the forehead of the infant in Baptism, and upon the various organs of sense in
Extreme Unction, etc.
Still another variant of the same holy sign
may be recognized in the direction of the "Lay Folks Mass Book"
(thirteenth century) that the people at the end of the Gospel should trace a
cross upon the bench or wall or a book and then kiss it. It was prescribed in some early uses that the priest ascending to the altar before the Introit should first mark a cross upon the altar-cloth and then should kiss the cross so traced. Moreover it would seem that the custom,
prevalent in Spain and some other countries, according to
which a man, after making the sign of the cross in the ordinary way, apparently
kisses his thumb, has a similar origin. The thumb laid across the
forefinger forms an image of the cross to which the lips are devoutly pressed.
Of all the above methods of venerating this
life-giving symbol and adopting it as an emblem, the marking of a little cross
seems to be the most ancient. We have positive evidence in the early Fathers
that such a practice was familiar to Christians in the second century. "In all our travels and
movements", says Tertullian (De cor. Mil., iii), "in all our coming in and going
out, in putting of our shoes, at the bath, at the table, in lighting our
candles, in lying down, in sitting down, whatever employment occupieth us, we
mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross". On the other hand this
must soon have passed into a gesture of benediction, as many quotations from
the Fathers in the fourth century would show. Thus St. Cyril of Jerusalem in his "Catecheses" (xiii, 36)
remarks: "let us then not be ashamed to confess the Crucified. Be the
cross our seal, made with boldness by our fingers on our brow and in every
thing; over the bread we eat and the cups we drink, in our comings and in
goings; before our sleep, when we lie down and when we awake; when we are
travelling, and when we are at rest".
The course of development seems to have
been the following. The cross was originally traced by Christians with the thumb or finger on their own foreheads. This
practice is attested by numberless allusions in Patristic literature, and it
was clearly associated in idea with certain references in Scripture, notably Ezekiel 9:4 (of the mark of the letter Tau); Exodus 17:9-14; and especially Apocalypse 7:3, 9:4 and 14:1. Hardly less early in date is the custom of marking a cross
on objects — already Tertullian speaks of the Christian woman "signing" her bed (cum lectulum
tuum signas, "Ad uxor.", ii, 5) before retiring to rest—and we soon
hear also of the sign of the cross being traced on the lips (Jerome, "Epitaph. Paulæ") and on the heart (Prudentius, "Cathem.", vi, 129). Not
unnaturally if the object were more remote, the cross which was directed towards
it had to be made in the air. Thus Epiphanius tells us (Adv. Hær., xxx, 12) of
a certain holy man Josephus, who imparted to a vessel of water the
power of overthrowing magical incantations by "making over the vessel with
his finger the seal of the cross" pronouncing the while a form of prayer. Again half a century later Sozomen, the church historian (VII, xxvi), describes how Bishop
Donatus when attacked by a dragon "made the sign of the cross with his
finger in the air and spat upon the monster". All this obviously leads up
to the suggestion of a larger cross made over the whole body, and perhaps the
earliest example which can be quoted comes to us from a source, possibly of the
fourth or fifth century. In the life of St. Nino, a woman saint, honoured as the Apostle of Georgia, we are told in these terms of a miracle worked by her: "St. Nino began to pray and entreat God for a long time. Then she took her (wooden) cross and with
it touched the Queen's head, her feet and her shoulders, making the sign of the
cross and straightway she was cured" (Studia Biblica, V, 32).
It appears on the whole probable that the
general introduction of our present larger cross (from brow to breast and from
shoulder to shoulder) was an indirect result of the Monophysite controversy. The use of the thumb alone or the single
forefinger, which so long as only a small cross was traced upon the forehead
was almost inevitable, seems to have given way for symbolic reasons to the use
of two fingers (the forefinger and middle finger, or thumb and forefinger) as
typifying the two natures and two wills in Jesus Christ. But if two fingers were to be employed, the large cross, in
which forehead, breast, etc. were merely touched, suggested itself as the only
natural gesture. Indeed some large movement of the sort was required to make it
perceptible that a man was using two fingers rather than one. At a somewhat
later date, throughout the greater part of the East, three fingers, or rather
the thumb and two fingers were displayed, while the ring and little finger were
folded back upon the palm. These two were held to symbolize the two natures or
wills in Christ, while the extended three denoted the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. At the same time these fingers were so held as to indicate
the common abbreviation I X C (Iesous Christos Soter), the forefinger
representing the I, the middle finger crossed with the thumb standing for the X
and the bent middle finger serving to suggest the C. In Armenia, however, the sign of the cross made with two fingers is
still retained to the present day. Much of this symbolism passed to the West,
though at a later date.
On the whole it seems probable that the
ultimate prevalence of the larger cross is due to an instruction of Leo IV in the middle of the ninth century. "Sign the chalice
and the host", he wrote, "with a right cross and not with circles or
with a varying of the fingers, but with two fingers stretched out and the thumb
hidden within them, by which the Trinity is symbolized. Take heed to make this
sign rightly, for otherwise you can bless nothing" (see Georgi, "Liturg. Rom. Pont.",
III, 37). Although this, of course, primarily applies to the position of the
hand in blessing with the sign of the cross; it seems to have been adapted
popularly to the making of the sign of the cross upon oneself. Aelfric (about 1000) probably had it in mind when he tells his
hearers in one of his sermons: "A man may wave about wonderfully with his hands
without creating any blessing unless he make the sign of the cross. But if he
do the fiend will soon be frightened on account of the
victorious token. With three fingers one must bless himself for the Holy Trinity" (Thorpe, "The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon
Church" I, 462). Fifty years earlier than this Anglo-Saxon Christians were exhorted to "bless all their bodies seven times
with Christ's rood token" (Blicking Hom., 47), which seems to assume this
large cross. Bede in his letter to Bishop Egbert advises him
to remind his flock "with what frequent diligence to employ upon
themselves the sign of our Lord's cross", though here we can draw no
inferences as to the kind of cross made. On the other hand when we meet in the
so-called "Prayer Book of King Henry" (eleventh century) a direction
in the morning prayers to mark with the holy Cross "the four
sides of the body", there is a good reason to suppose that the large sign
with which we are now familiar is meant.
At this period the manner of making it in
the West seems to have been identical with that followed at present in the
East, i.e. only three fingers were used, and the hand traveled from the right
shoulder to the left. The point, it must be confessed, is not entirely clear
and Thalhofer (Liturgik, I, 633) inclines to the opinion that in the
passages of Belethus (xxxix), Sicardus (III, iv), Innocent III (De myst. Alt., II, xlvi), and Durandus (V, ii, 13), which
are usually appealed to in proof of this, these authors have in mind the small cross made
upon the forehead or external objects, in which the hand moves naturally from
right to left, and not the big cross made from shoulder to shoulder. Still, a rubric in a manuscript copy of the York Missal clearly requires the priest when signing himself with the paten to touch the left shoulder after the right. Moreover it is
at least clear from many pictures and sculptures that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Greek
practice of extending only three fingers was adhered to by many Latin Christians. Thus the compiler of the Ancren Riwle
(about 1200) directs his nuns at "Deus in adjutorium" to make a little cross
from above the forehead down to the breast with three fingers". However
there can be little doubt that long before the close of the Middle Ages the large sign of the cross was more commonly made in the
West with the open hand and that the bar of the cross was traced from left to
right. In the "Myroure of our Ladye" (p. 80) the Bridgettine Nuns of
Sion have a mystical reason given to them for the practice: "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".
The manual act of tracing the cross with
the hand or the thumb has at all periods been quite commonly, though not
indispensably, accompanied by a form of words. The formula, however, has varied
greatly. In the earlier ages we have evidence for such invocation as "The
sign of Christ", "The seal of the living God", "In the name
of Jesus"; etc. Later we meet "In the name of Jesus of Nazareth", "In the name of the Holy Trinity", "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Ghost", "Our help is in the name of the Lord", "O God come to my assistance". Members of the Orthodox Greek Church when blessing themselves with three fingers, as above
explained, commonly use the invocation: "Holy God, Holy strong One, Holy Immortal One, Have mercy on us",
which words, as is well known, have been retained in their Greek form by the Western Church in the Office for Good Friday.
It is unnecessary to insist upon the
effects of grace and power attributed by the Church at all times to the use of the holy sign of the cross. From
the earliest period it has been employed in all exorcisms and conjurations as a weapon against the spirits of darkness,
and it takes its place not less consistently in the ritual of the sacraments and in every form of blessing and consecration. A famous difficulty is that suggested by the making of the
sign of the cross repeatedly over the Host and Chalice after the words of
institution have been spoken in the Mass. The true explanation is probably to be found in the fact that at the
time these crosses were introduced (they vary too much in the early copies of
the Canon to be of primitive institution), the clergy and faithful did not clearly ask themselves at what precise
moment the transubstantiation of the elements was effected. They were
satisfied to believe that it was the result of the whole of the consecratory prayer which we call the Canon, without determining the exact words
which were operative; just as we are now content to know that the Precious Blood is consecrated by the whole word spoken over the chalice, without pausing to reflect whether all the words are necessary. Hence the signs of the cross continue till the end of the
Canon and they may be regarded as mentally referred back to a consecration which is still conceived of as incomplete. The process is
the reverse of that by which in the Greek Church at the "Great Entrance" the highest marks of honour are paid to the simple elements of bread and wine in anticipation of the consecration which they are to receive shortly afterwards.
