Homily delivered by Bishop Leo O’Reilly

at the Grotto, Lourdes 

May 2010 

“With Bernadette we make the Sign of the Cross” 

The story of the apparitions of Lourdes began when Bernadette Soubirous, an uneducated 14 year-old girl and a few companions wandered down towards a deserted cave near the river Gave on a cold February day in 1858. On the occasion of the first apparition of Our Lady at the Grotto on 11 February Berdadette recounts her reaction to the vision: “I rubbed my eyes. I thought I must be making a mistake. I put my hand in my pocket and took out my rosary. I tried to make the Sign of the Cross but I could not lift my hand to my forehead. The vision made the Sign of the Cross. Then my hand trembled. I tried, and was able to sign myself.”

The theme of this year’s pilgrimage is “with Bernadette we make the Sign of the Cross.” And is this Mass in honour of St Bernadette we reflect briefly on this theme. The Sign of the Cross has a very prominent place in our prayer and practice as Christians. We make the sign of the Cross at the beginning of all our prayers. It reminds us of two things.

The first is the fundamental mystery of our faith – the mystery of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We celebrate that mystery tomorrow on the feast of the Blessed Trinity. We confess God as our Father as God in Himself, our Creator and the Creator of everything that exists.  

We confess Jesus as God with us, Emmanuel. He is the Son of God and the Son of Mary. He is the eternal Word of God who was made flesh and lived among us. He is God in a human way, a way that we can come to know and so we can relate to God through Jesus.

We confess the Holy Spirit as God within us. The Holy Spirit makes us sharers in God’s life and makes us children of God. And so we have the extraordinary privilege that we can call God Abba, Father, or more correctly, Dadda. God has come that close to us.

The Sign of the Cross reminds us that the triune God – the Father, Son and Spirit, lives within us and that we share intimately in the life of God. The words of Jesus to the apostles at the Last Supper assure us: “if anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home with him.” God is no longer a distant majesty before him we bow and tremble. God is not the impersonal power imagined by those who say: The force be with you. God is a community of persons who have invited us to share their company. He is the God of the Roublev icon, depicting the three angles who appeared to Abraham, sitting around a table sharing a meal. And that table opens out to the viewer and invites them to come in and share in the meal also.

The second thing the Sign of the Cross reminds us of is conveyed by the sign rather than the words. We trace the shape of the cross as we pray the words: In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The cross was originally a sign of disgrace. It was an instrument for torturing and killing criminals. But Jesus’ death on the cross transformed it into the ultimate sign of love. “God loved the world so much that gave his only Son so that we might not be lost, but might have eternal life.” The first reading tells us the sacrifice that this involved for Jesus: Jesus was equal to God, but he emptied himself to become one of us. He humbled himself. He died on the Cross. But God raised him up to his right hand and gave him the name ‘Lord’, the name of God himself. Here was the ultimate triumph of failure. Here the words of the prophet Hosea are surpassed: Love is not only as strong as death, it is stronger than death.

When we come to Lourdes we retrace the footsteps of Bernadette. We follow her to the Grotto. We kneel and pray the rosary with her. We bathe in the waters of the stream she unleashed.  This year we focus on one particular prayer – the sign of the Cross. We make the sign of the cross with Bernadette. We pray in spirit with her. We try to imitate her dispositions of humility, patience, endurance.

When Bernadette went to make the sign of the cross that day, she couldn’t move her hand. I see that as a reminder of our weakness and powerlessness in the face of many of life’s experiences. For many here it is the experience of sickness, perhaps sickness that is life-threatening. For others it is the sickness of a family member or a friend. For others it is some intractable problem connected with family or work or business. Whatever it is we feel helpless before it. We are as if paralysed.

And sometimes in situations like this we even find it impossible to pray. That’s not a sign of lack of faith or of goodwill. It may well be a sign that God is calling us to a deeper trust in Him and a closer relationship with him. God is bringing us to realise that prayer is not first and foremost something we do, but something God’s Spirit does in us. St Paul’s words are very encouraging for us when we cannot pray. At times like that he says: “The Holy Spirit comes to help us in our weakness. For when we do not know how to pray as we ought, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words.” Rather than making frantic efforts to pray, we sometimes need to relax a bit and allow God’s Spirit to pray in us. Prayer is first and last the work of God.

So at the beginning of our prayer we make the sign of the Cross with Bernadette as she made it with Our Lady. Too often we make the sign of the Cross like the soccer stars coming on as subs in a big match – a hurried squiggle of the hand that looks more like a secret code than a prayer. In future let us do it slowly and with attention. We remember that it is only the power of the Holy Spirit in us that enables us to say that prayer or any other prayer. So making the sign of the Cross with Bernadette will help us to slow down and get into the proper mood for prayer.

And, as we begin our prayer in the name of the Holy Trinity we finish it in the same way. We finish it with praise of the Trinity: Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.