What bowing before the Cross means to Catholics

By means of the wood of the cross Christ won the salvation of us all

Imagine you're in the midst of a storm so severe that you have to leave home to reach a place of safety. You are not sure that your car will be able to make it through the floodwaters, but it's all you have to rely on. You take your family and essential documents with you and abandon your home. Though the buffeting from the wind is frightening and the other challenges to the car's ability to cope are numerous and extreme, it excels in passing through all the life-threatening dangers and it carries you to the haven you had hoped to reach. 

Given the car's outstanding performance, would you and your family have a new-found respect for that piece of machinery that had preserved your lives? I'm sure you would. And in the past, when families kept vehicles for a longer time than is the custom now, you might have bestowed a name on it to express your bond with it, and you might pat it in an affectionate way.

In a somewhat comparable way Catholics over Easter have shown a profound respect of, or a deep sentiment toward, and express their close bond to, the cross that Jesus Christ died on. The cross is the means of our redemption, so that we are saved from punishment for our offences against God, who is Being itself, far beyond our comprehension, but by means of the cross, able to be identified as the "tremendous lover" of every single one of us. 

At the recent solemn Good Friday ceremonies, whereas during Lent the crucifix and statues of the saints, those heroes in the service of God and humanity, have been covered in a mournful purple cloth, the celebrant gradually uncovers the cross, exposing once again the figure of Christ. But the focus is as much on the cross itself. The celebrant intones: "Behold the wood of the cross, on which hung the Saviour of the world." To which the congregation responds: "Come let us adore." Cue Protestant outrage as the people then go forward to bow or genuflect before the cross, even kiss the figure of the Christ or the wood on which the figure hangs.  This part of the Good Friday ceremony is sometimes described as the "adoration" of the cross, at other times as "veneration". As to terminology, we have to note the variations in the rich Latin and Greek usage the Church follows.

Harking back to the analogy above with the car that has earned respect, we respond to the cross in our parish church or chapel because of what it symbolically represents as to our redemption. The Church requires churches to always display a crucifix because it "calls to mind for the faithful the saving Passion of the Lord". For centuries before Luther tried to put paid to this kind of pious practice in his battle with the Church's application of the granting of indulgences, Christians had been honoring the cross with processions and acts of honor, even "creeping to the Cross", which was encouraged by kings of France and England. This entailed crawling on one's knees.  

The human responds to the material as much as any other creature of the animal world; we learn through our senses; we understand complex ideas when we can apply them or compare them to the practical or to something our environment. Therefore:

Few events are more emotional for a Catholic than assembling with hundreds of others and in procession adoring our crucified Jesus on the cross, to see individuals genuflect, kiss his feet, watch as parents lift up their children to do the same. Despite our grief, we know that without the crucifixion, without the instrument of salvation, there is no Resurrection – which means no life for us. Every blessing, every grace, every sacrament we have results from Christ's sacrifice on Calvary.

Is this adoration of the cross, this reverent homage before the symbol of the means of our redemption, to be equated with bowing before idols, meaning gods? Nonsense!  

Having applied our heart and mind to what the cross means, and so strengthened by this sign of God's love, we can take up our own cross each day and continue in a positive way our journey through life: "To journey through life, in imitation of the One who 'endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God' (Letter to the Hebrews 12:2). 

By his use of the wood of the cross, "by every step of the condemned Christ, every action and every word ... he reveals to us the truth about God and humankind". We have to observe, learn, and respond with a reverence for the ordinary evoked by the awe-inspiring outcome made possible by a mundane "tree", which provided beams that lifted up the suffering servant to glory. The cross is at the centre, so we pray: May we hear the astonished seraphic voices calling to each from other around the cross, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts! The whole earth is full of His glory!” 

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