Why? To remind you that you are loved!
There are many reasons to wear a cross, so this post might be the first in a series, but to me, the first, foundational reason is to remind yourself that you are loved by your Creator. This love is not casual, impersonal, and generalized, but it is intentional, determined, intimate, passionate, and wise yet infinitely self-giving.
We hear a lot about the importance of loving ourselves. I've seen people on social media speak of the struggle they experience trying to love themselves seemingly with little real success. I wonder if it is impossible to love ourselves adequately without experiencing a large enough deposit of love from outside of our beings.
For all of us there should have been the love a baby receives through attentive, empathetic care that matures with them through childhood. For most of us, this love deposited through family has been imperfect; nevertheless we are grateful for it, and we grieve with those who entirely lacked it
But suffusing that human love, and deeper still, is our Creator's love. It fills in all the cracks and empty places that human love should have filled but didn't, and it goes deeper than that even, holding our longing hearts with infinite tenderness and with an infinite, unwavering, omnipotent intention for good.
This love broke through into human experience through Jesus Christ, who was so much more than a martyr for a cause or an enlightened man caught in the nets of human evil. He is God, He is Love incarnate who on the cross took into Himself our faults and failures, our sins and sorrows, when He allowed Himself to be murdered on a cross. His willing and sacrificial death was an incomprehensibly huge cosmic act of love that was yet personal and intimately knowing.
Wearing a cross can be a sign of that love, a reminder that you are loved in a way greater than any human could love you or that you could love yourself.