MERGED: Veneration/Adoration of the Cross

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I’ve never attended a Catholic Good Friday “event” before (it’s not Mass, so I’m not sure what to call it).

At the portion of the Veneration of the Cross, everyone got up and stood in line in the middle aisle. I got up too.

Turns out, people are kissing the wounds of Jesus.

I was a bit hesitant. Should I leave the line? Am I going to be too obvious? Will I cause a disturbance if go back to my seat? Is genuflecting allowed as an alternative? Is it wrong to genuflect without the Host being present?

All these thoughts raced through my brain, but to just do what everyone else was doing, I kissed the wound of Jesus.

I feel too unworthy to venerate the Cross in such a manner…Probably should have just stayed in my seat and prayed.

Was I even allowed to venerate the Cross by going up the aisle? Is it like a Communion thing…? 😊
 
You were most certainly welcome to venerate the Cross. What is expected is a reverential act of the person’s choosing. I choose to genuflect and kiss the Cross and I’ve seen: kneeling, genuflecting, bowing, touching the Cross, kissing the Cross and all manner of combinations thereof.

What is important is interior disposition and an outward respectful act of that.
 
grasscutter said:
You were most certainly welcome to venerate the Cross. What is expected is a reverential act of the person’s choosing. I choose to genuflect and kiss the Cross and I’ve seen: kneeling, genuflecting, bowing, touching the Cross, kissing the Cross and all manner of combinations thereof.

What is important is interior disposition and an outward respectful act of that.
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I wish I knew there are options…
 
You know how it is said that Jesus is the door and we must go through Jesus to be saved??? In my own personal thought process, I see all of us at the end of our lives faced with the crucified Jesus and if we accept him as our savior we kiss his wounded feet… The ones who can’t…, but the ones who CAN…!!! And we as Catholics have a head start because we venerated his wounds while we were alive… Just MHO…
 
The ‘announcement’ at our parish was that those who wish to Venerate the Cross could…that’s assuming a lot of knowledge from those in the pews 😃 but that’s what we assume every week, right?
I told my 11 yo daughter with Down syndrome that we were showing love for what Jesus did for us and that she could kiss the wood itself, but that since others were in front of us and she is having heart surgery on Monday, she should probably just touch her hand to her lips and then touch her hand to the cross, which is what she did.
I always tell my kids, that when they come across a new devotion in the Church that they aren’t familiar with that they should watch, imitate and ask questions of the most knowledgeable person there!
 
This is where a good missal comes in handy.

The liturgical service is called the “Friday of the Passion of the Lord.” The rubrics state that we are to approach as if we are in procession for communion and are to venerate the Cross by genuflecting, kissing or some other pious act. We are to genuflect to the Cross as we exit.





-Tim-
 
Bear with me because I have only been Catholic for one year so I have a question. I went to the Good Friday service today and got to experience, for the first time, The Veneration of the cross. What confuses me is that the missal said that we are to “Adoration of the cross” and we even all said in a response “come let us adore” in response to The Priest saying “Behold the wooden cross” or something to that effect.

I thought we are only supposed to adore God. We are not even supposed to adore Mary or any of the saints. So I guess I equated adoration to worship. Am I incorrect in this? Anybody want to school me so I can have a better understanding of why we “adore” the cross when we are always told adoration is due to God alone? Thank you.
 
I think that when we say “the cross”, we are referring to the sacrifice. I have noted that the term “cross” is not always used to refer to the literal piece of wood; it can also mean a struggle, a burden i.e. when Jesus told us to take up our cross, He meant take up your burden, take us your sacrifice; He did not instruct all humans to literally crucify themselves.

So the priest says “behold the cross” and we say “come let us adore”, basically meaning - come let us adore the cross that Jesus bore, the sacrifice of Jesus and all that it means, because what it means is Jesus’ love and the salvation of humanity. We are not adoring the literal wooden cross (I know it’s confusing because the hymn says ‘wooden cross’, but it’s definitely figurative language), we are adoring the passion of Christ that it represents. Do you know what I mean?

I could be wrong. That’s kind of just what it means to me.

Another option is just the context of the word ‘adore’. “Adore” can be used to mean “worship”, or it can be used to mean veneration - literally “The Veneration of the Cross”. For instance, you can say “I adore flowers” to mean “I think flowers are quite nice” or you can say “I adore pink” to mean “I think that pink can be very pretty”. I certainly do not worship flowers, i just kind of like them.
A certain word does not mean the same thing all the time. It depends on the context, on how it’s used. So even though we might typically use “adore” specifically for God when we use it in a religious sense, it does not mean that adoration is equal to worship. The only reason we use adore just for God is for clarification, just so that we have some sort of word for a particular situation, not because it necessarily has any stronger meaning.

So it’s a matter of figurative speech or context or something. The point is, we don’t worship the cross. The point is not the words we use, the point is the meaning we attach to them. You could attach an idol-like meaning to “Behold the wooden cross…come let us adore” IF you really wanted to, but we don’t. We attach a very different meaning to them - a remembrance of the cross that Jesus bore and a feeling a gratitude towards the sacrifice that our beloved Lord made for us.
 
Maybe this will help. Our cross today had the corpus
of Jesus on it. We kissed His Feet and Wounds. When
you adore the cross you are adoring Jesus in His Sacrifice.
 
I suppose it can depend on how high up they hold the Cross. It may be too low down to do anything other than kneel which is the way it was done in my first church.
 
LaughingBoy1503 said:
Bear with me because I have only been Catholic for one year so I have a question. I went to the Good Friday service today and got to experience, for the first time, The Veneration of the cross. What confuses me is that the missal said that we are to “Adoration of the cross” and we even all said in a response “come let us adore” in response to The Priest saying “Behold the wooden cross” or something to that effect.

I thought we are only supposed to adore God. We are not even supposed to adore Mary or any of the saints. So I guess I equated adoration to worship. Am I incorrect in this? Anybody want to school me so I can have a better understanding of why we “adore” the cross when we are always told adoration is due to God alone? Thank you.
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It is an adoration of Christ and his sacrifice of which the cross represents.

This may help.

Our cross is two pieces of driftwood found at the beach and tied together. It comes out once a year for Good Friday. The rest of the year it’s in a closet behind some boxes. If we were really worshiping the wood, I think we would store it and display it better all year!
 
Thanks for the responses. I think I understand a little better. Come to think of it, Father said, in the homily, that a lot of us have wooden or metal crosses but “The Cross” is really our Christian faith. He said something to that effect. I like getting explanations about these things because I came from a protestant upbringing and it still affects me. Not the doctrine, just the displays of respect/veneration and terminology that Catholics use are different and I am still getting use to it even though I am a Catholic in full communion with The Church. Better to ask than jump to conclusions, right? 🙂
 
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