The Many Meaningful Signs of the Cross in the Roman Canon

Were the reformers of the 1960s theological illiterates and liturgical birdbrains? One would like to think not, yet that is how it looks after immersing oneself in centuries of tradition

From a Cistercian altar missal (photo by author)

On the first page of his famous and rightly beloved introduction to the Mass—republished by Angelico Press under the title The Traditional Latin Mass Explained—Dom Prosper Guéranger utters these decisive words: “The Sacrifice of the Mass is the Sacrifice of the Cross itself; and in it we must see our Lord nailed to the Cross; and offering up his Blood for our sins, to his Eternal Father.” Throughout the work, Guéranger lovingly comments on the significance of each of the many signs of the Cross that the priest makes, upon himself, over the people, over the host and chalice, with the host and chalice, etc., and it never once occurs to him to apologize for the number of these signs. He takes it for granted that they are present because they are meaningful, and it is our task to understand their meaning.

In his unparalleled The Traditional Mass: History, Form, and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite, Michael Fiedrowicz speaks thus of Frankish developments in the Roman Canon: “The Canon, which was meanwhile being prayed in silence, was embellished by means of many gestures, bows, and signs of the Cross, to become a vivid action of the priest (actio)” (20). The 1243 Franciscan edition of the Roman Curia’s Ordo Missae was the first to commit to writing detailed rubrics for “genuflections, bows, signs of the Cross, and other gestures,” which “became a firm element of the Roman rite through such exact recording, later continued (1498; 1502) by the papal Master of Ceremonies Johann Burchard of Strassburg with minute arrangement of even the smallest gestures” (23–24).

Fiedrowicz later expands on a particular aspect of this rituality:

The signs of the Cross, which in various forms accompany many prayers or are accompanied by them, emphatically connect the sacrifice on the Cross, which obtained forgiveness of sin and eternal life, to particular parts of the celebration of the Mass, e.g., the request for forgiveness after the Confiteor (Indulgentiam, absolutionem, et remissionem peccatorum), the close of the Credo (et vitam venturi saeculi), and the reception of Communion (Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam). The sign of the Cross made at the close of the Sanctus during the words Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini recalls that the entrance into Jerusalem began Our Lord’s Passion, to which, as a mystery to be realized, vivid witness is given again and again on the altar with profound numerical symbolism, above all by the numerous signs of the Cross made over the bread and wine, or the Body and Blood, respectively, during the prayers of the Canon. Even in the slightest gestures, for instance the thumbs crossed over each other in a cross at the spreading of the hands over the Eucharistic offerings (Hanc igitur oblationem), the sign of salvation is present in order to indicate Christ as the sacrificial lamb. (208)

Later in the book he enters into this matter more deeply: 

The sacrificial character of the Canon is emphasized also by the multiple signs of the Cross that accompany it in ornate arrangement, functioning as either effective blessings or symbolic illustrations. Before the consecration they possess a sanctifying function of preparing for the Eucharistic transubstantiation: benedicas haec ✠ dona, haec ✠ munera, haec ✠ sancta sacrificia (Te igitur); benedictam ✠, adscriptam ✠, ratam ✠ (Quam oblationem); benedixit ✠ (Qui pridie; Simili Modo). Equally before and after the consecration they partly illustrate and intensify terms of blessing and sanctification—sanctificas ✠, vivificas ✠, benedicis ✠ (Per quem haec omnia)—and partly identify and distinguish particular words as being sacred: corpus ✠ et sanguis ✠ (Quam oblationem); hostiam ✠ puram, hostiam ✠ sanctam, hostiam ✠ immaculatam, panem ✠ sanctum vitae aeternae et calicem ✠ salutis perpetuae (Unde et memores); sacrosanctum Filii tui ✠ corpus ✠ et sanguinem ✠ (Supplices te rogamus). The signs of the Cross witnessed since the eighth century were in part originally rhetorical pointing gestures that, according to ancient custom, accompanied the spoken word and were gradually stylized into a cross. The twenty-five signs of the Cross in toto thus continually refer to the sacrifice of the Cross. (281)

(Short digression: As to the antiquity of these signs, Fr. Claude Barthe notes in his work A Forest of Symbols:

So far as concerns the numerous signs of the cross made during the Canon, if one agrees that the first of the Ordines Romani, “Ordo I” (a ceremoniale, or book of rites and ceremonies, for the Papal Mass on Easter morning, dating to the eighth century), is evidence of a Roman ritual tradition several centuries older, then its attestation of the repetition of these gestures during the Canon would confirm that they originated in the Late Antique period. (108)

One would think their antiquity would have won them protection from the supposed champions of returning to earlier and “purer” forms of worship. But just as we know that today’s loudest proponents of synodality are the most autocratic and the least collegial, so too yesterday’s loudest proponents of “recovering the way the early Christians prayed” turned out to be the most modern in their assumptions and the least respectful of unbroken customs whose origins are lost in the mists of time. One begins to sense a pattern… End of digression.)

Fiedrowicz cites in support St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologiae III, question 83, article 5, ad 3), and continues with an eloquent summary:

The multiple signs of the Cross are always and everywhere signs of remembrance, which refer to the Passion of Christ and identify the Mass as the realization of the sacrifice of the Cross. Moreover, the signs of the Cross before and after the consecration are also symbols of the blessing and grace that are contained in the Body and Blood of Christ and are to flow out over Christ’s mystical body. Especially after the consecration, the signs of the Cross emphasize the identity of the Eucharistic species with Christ’s Body and Blood, offered up on the Cross. (282) 

The story of a great convert’s suffering, told in the covers of two books: one written in the 1950s and one written in the late 1960s

An Anglican convert’s discoveries

In his 1955 book The Great Prayer: Concerning the Canon of the Mass, the convert historian Hugh Ross Williamson noted: 

During the Canon of the Mass, the sign of the cross is made twenty-six times. [Evidently HRW is counting an additional sign that Fiedrowicz passes over for some reason.—PAK] It is almost as if the Church were determined that, however attention may wander and words become a mechanical repetition, however dry the devotion or lazy the intellect, the body at least shall focus the meaning… Yet the signs are not repetitive. The twenty-six fall into six separate groups each having its own particular significance. (22)

Williamson proceeds to connect the first three with the Trinity, the second five with the wounds of Christ, the two at the consecration with the twofold blessing narrated in the Last Supper, and so forth, in keeping with the allegorical tradition best summarized in our day by Fr. Claude Barthe in A Forest of Symbols. In short, the plethora of carefully numbered signs of the cross throughout the Mass and particularly in the Roman Canon is part of the Catholic Church’s lex orandi that reveals her lex credendi.

A sign that this was once a widely understood fact may be seen in the attitude of Protestant reformers. In his scorching 1969 pamphlet The Modern Mass: A Reversion to the Reforms of Cranmer—a crucial predecessor to the far better known Cranmer’s Godly Order of Michael Davies—Hugh Ross Williamson reminds us:

Cranmer forbade the Crosses [i.e., the signs of the Cross] and the Elevation but kept an approximation to the words, which now meant something quite different, to give the illusion of continuity. (Arouca ed., 35)

The removal of these signs of the cross is one of several vivid differences between the lex orandi of the venerable Roman Canon and that of the so-called “Eucharistic Prayer I” of Paul VI’s modern missal. (Additional differences are detailed in chapters 8 and 9 of my The Once and Future Roman Rite.)

Claudio Coello, “Santo Domingo de Guzmán” (ca. 1685) (detail; source)

Swatting flies or seeking refuge in the Cross?

Back in high school, I went on a youth retreat (pretty useless and annoying as I recall) in which I remember an older priest making fun of the old Latin Mass, which at that time I did not know at all (like the infant Samuel, “who did not know the Lord”: 1 Sam 3:7). This priest said, with a slightly mocking laugh: “We used to have to make so many signs of the cross, it was like we were brushing flies off, or something!” That stuck with me for some reason.

Later, when I discovered the old Mass, I noticed how the new generation of clergy offering it did these signs much more reverently—they took care in how they did it. Some still rush a bit, human weakness being what it is, but most of the clergy trace out deliberate signs of the cross in order to put themselves in mind of what they are about. They would agree with the opinion of F. Cassingena-Trévedy:

Provided that it is really lived with love, and no longer performed in a cranky and mechanical way, the richness of gestures in the Tridentine celebration, with its signs of the cross, its kisses, its genuflections, eminently favors, in the deepest sense of the term, the commitment of the celebrant in the act he carries out: in a movement at once gymnastic and spiritual, it draws the gift of his own body, the real presence of his body (that is to say, of his whole being) to the Body he presents; gesture after gesture, sign after sign, it sews and binds the celebrant to the altar of the Lord and recalls his body to the Body. (Cited in Fiedrowicz, 205)

Among the many great saints remembered in our liturgical calendar in August is St. Dominic (regardless of whether one celebrates his feast on the old date, August 4, or the new date, August 8). If one takes up St. Dominic’s Nine Ways of Prayer, one cannot fail to be struck by the description given of the ninth:

While he prayed it appeared as if he were brushing dust or bothersome flies from his face when he repeatedly fortified himself with the Sign of the Cross. The brethren thought that it was while praying in this way that the saint obtained his extensive penetration of Sacred Scripture and profound understanding of the divine words, the power to preach so fervently and courageously, and that intimate acquaintance with the Holy Spirit by which he came to know the hidden things of God.

Did St. Dominic in his passionate embrace of the Cross, in his repeated action of crucifying himself (as it were), know something that the polite, efficient, apathetic managers of the Consilium did not? Yes. Though to the frivolous observer he seemed to be “brushing dust or bothersome flies from his face,” he was in reality communing with the Cross, with which he “repeatedly fortified himself.” He knew the secret of the lover of Christ. One who loves the Lord as he did will not complain but rather rejoice to find this primary symbol of His love and of our response to His love everywhere in the Mass, with its countless signs of the Cross that He bore for us, and that we take up in order to follow Him.

This is the sort of difference between old and new rites that is at once subtle and overpowering. It is subtle enough that a layman may not notice it for a long while, especially when first assisting at the usus antiquior; but soon enough, the attentive will perceive the cruciform liturgy; he will begin to sense how the priest is chained and configured to it, he will catch notice of the shining mysterium fidei sunk within the chalice of blood—and one sees, one knows, that this is the Mass of the Holy Sacrifice.

In the Canticle of Canticles, the lover wishes to lavish all the expressions of love he can upon the beloved, and she wishes to reciprocate. This is what we see in the intense mysticism of the traditional Mass. No wonder fervent young people, and above all, priests, are so strongly drawn to it and affected by it. It’s the difference between the “drunken madman” who falls under the fascination of God, who seeks the Divine Lover’s face, and the sober bureaucrat making eye-contact with others, seeking their approval.