“To make the Sign of the Cross well” will remain for Bernadette a priority throughout her life, like a spiritual fruit of the Apparitions. Her first encounter in silence with the Virgin Mary was marked by this sign which expresses the extreme love of God for each one of us. It is indeed not the sign in itself, but what it signifies, which is the great treasure: the eternal love of God extending his hands to us…

“More than a simple sign, it is an initiation into the mysteries of the faith that Bernadette receives from Mary”, the Pope commented in Lourdes in his homily of 14th September 2008 on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Glorious Cross. With the words which accompany it, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, the Sign of he Cross is a kind of synthesis of our faith, it tells us of the extent to which God loved us”, Benedict XVI emphasised.

This Trinitarian gesture which we often make far too quickly, in a mechanical manner, is in fact of such importance that in 2010 all pilgrims are invited “to learn to make the Sign of the Cross with Bernadette”. This special issue of Lourdes Magazine is intended to prepare us for it.

We must repeat unceasingly the daily exercise of ridding our inner depths of the one Saint Paul calls the “old man”, with his prejudices, his infidelities and his hatred, so that the “new man” may live. To empty ourselves of self, of judgements on others, of the black or false ideas which haunt our imagination, is quite a difficult process because it is a negative attitude. More positive is the invocation of the Trinity which leads our whole being to welcome God, and the Sign of the Cross which envelopes us with His Presence.

It seems to me intuitively that when we make this Sign, it is as if the shadow of the Cross covered us in the same way as it covered Mary at the instant the Crucified Christ gave up His Spirit. This fruitful shadow, that of the Spirit, associates us with the compassion of Mary, Mother of the new humanity.

Let us receive therefore from Mary who is “full of grace”, this sign which is also the commitment of a lifetime. Filled with the Holy Spirit, it means seeking with her the will of the celestial Father and to have no other will than His: to love is not a feeling but an action.