What are Catholics doing just before the Gospel reading when they mark their foreheads, lips, & hearts with a cross?
While the priest or deacon announces the Gospel reading (“A reading from the holy Gospel according to . . .”), Catholics use the edge of their right thumb to make small crosses on their foreheads, lips, and chests at the level of the heart. This action symbolizes, and can be accompanied by, this little prayer: “May the Word of God that is written on this page be embedded in my mind, spoken by my lips, and cherished in my heart.” (Adapted from Catholic Sourcebook, edited by Fr. Peter Kline, 1985). This action and accompanying prayer is one of a numerous class of actions and objects that, with their accompanying prayers, are called sacramentals. Sacramentals, like sacraments, link objects and actions in the material world with the world of the spirit, thereby making everyday things holy and disposing those using them to see and treat everything in life as a visible manifestation of the invisible God. Although sacramentals do not, of themselves, confer the grace of the Holy Spirit that is
