Audio only:
What is the true origin of the Sign of the Cross—and why do Christians make it in completely different ways?
In this episode Jimmy Akin traces the ancient gesture all the way back to the apostles, uncovers its surprising biblical roots in Ezekiel and Revelation, reveals why East and West cross themselves differently, and laughs at Hollywood’s hilarious “lightning-bolt” version. He also explains when you can (and should) make it—even if you’re not Catholic or baptized yet—and why the only thing that really matters is the faith in your heart.
TRANSCRIPT:
Coming Up
The sign of the cross—the gesture many Christians make with their hand—is one of the oldest Christian customs.
But where did it come from, why do Christians make it in different ways, and what are we actually expressing when we make it?
Let’s get into it!
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Howdy, folks!
We’re in our second year of the podcast now, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years to come—and get early access to new episodes—by going to Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast
What the Sign of the Cross Is
Recently I got a request on YouTube from a viewer named Mary Ishya, who says:
MARY: Jimmy, would you do an episode on the sign of the cross?
Sure! I’d be happy to!
The sign of the cross is a gesture in which a Christian traces the shape of the cross—often on the body—while calling on the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
It’s used in many different circumstances.
One of these is at the beginning and ending of prayers.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2157
The Christian begins his day, his prayers, and his activities with the Sign of the Cross: “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” The baptized person dedicates the day to the glory of God and calls on the Savior’s grace which lets him act in the Spirit as a child of the Father. The sign of the cross strengthens us in temptations and difficulties.
Here in America, many people think of the sign of the cross as something Catholics do, but it isn’t just a Catholic practice.
It is used by all the historic Christian churches—by Catholics, by the Eastern Orthodox, and by the Oriental Orthodox.
It’s also used by some in the Protestant community, such as Lutherans, Anglicans, and sometimes others.
Martin Luther discusses it in his Small Catechism, where he says Christians should make it part of their morning and evening prayers. He writes:
Small Catechism (Morning Prayer)
In the morning when you get up, make the sign of the holy cross and say: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
He gives the same instructions for saying your evening prayers.
So the sign of the cross is not unique to any one church.
It belongs to the whole Christian family, and anyone is welcome to make it.
How the Sign Is Made
The sign of the cross has been made in multiple different ways historically, and several of these are common today.
The most familiar way is the large form. The Catholic Encyclopedia says:
The Catholic Encyclopedia, “Sign of the Cross”
Most commonly and properly the words “sign of the cross” are used of the large cross traced from forehead to breast and from shoulder to shoulder, such as Catholics are taught to make upon themselves when they begin their prayers.
A priest also uses a form of the sign when he gives a blessing.
The Catholic Encyclopedia states:
The Catholic Encyclopedia, “Sign of the Cross”
Another kind of sign of the cross is that made in the air by bishops, priests, and others in blessing persons or material objects.
So this form isn’t made on the body but by clergymen when they’re giving blessings.
It’s as if they’re tracing the sign of the cross on the person or thing being blessed—but without actually touching it.
One advantage of doing it this way is that you can bless a large group of people at once, since there is no way you could physically trace the sign of the cross on each and every person individually.
There is also a smaller form. Today, this form is used just before the reading of the Gospel at Mass. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains:
The Catholic Encyclopedia, “Sign of the Cross”
A third variety is represented by the little cross, generally made with the thumb, which the priest or deacon traces for example upon the book of the Gospels and then upon his own forehead, lips, and breast at Mass.
Today, the people do this in the liturgy also, so they use their thumb to trace a little cross on the forehead, the lips, and the chest
Which is a way of saying, “May the Gospel be in my head, on my lips, and in my heart.”
This small form of the cross also has important historic roots, as we’ll see.
It’s also important to realize that the large form is not made the same way everywhere.
Sometimes people use their whole hand to make it, and sometimes they use just three fingers—or, more precisely, two fingers and the thumb.
Also, in the West, people move the hand from the forehead down to the breast, and then from the left shoulder to the right.
In the East, the hand goes from the forehead to the breast and then from the right shoulder to the left.
This difference is not new, and the Western practice itself has changed over time.
The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that the Western way used to match the Eastern:
The Catholic Encyclopedia, “Sign of the Cross”
[Around A.D. 1000] the manner of making it in the West seems to have been identical with that followed at present in the East, i.e. only three fingers were used, and the hand traveled from the right shoulder to the left.
Later, the West shifted to the form we use now:
The Catholic Encyclopedia, “Sign of the Cross”
However there can be little doubt that long before the close of the Middle Ages the large sign of the cross was more commonly made in the West with the open hand and that the bar of the cross was traced from left to right.
The arrangement of the fingers has also carried meaning, especially in the East:
The Catholic Encyclopedia, “Sign of the Cross”
At a somewhat later date, throughout the greater part of the East, three fingers, or rather the thumb and two fingers were displayed, while the ring and little finger were folded back upon the palm. These two were held to symbolize the two natures or wills in Christ, while the extended three denoted the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity.
In many Eastern and Hispanic settings, people also make a small cross with the thumb and forefinger and then kiss the thumb at the end, as a sign of affection for the cross.
But there’s one form of the sign of the cross that nobody makes, and you see it in the 1944 movie The Mummy’s Curse.
The Mummy’s Curse is set in Louisiana, and it has a lot of characters in it who are supposed to be Cajuns, and thus Catholics.
There’s a scene in it where Lon Chaney Jr.’s character—the Mummy—has killed a woman named Tante Berthe—or Aunt Bertha.
The characters discover her body, and one of the Cajuns makes the sign of the cross in horror.
If you’re watching the video version of the podcast, notice how the man standing next to the doctor makes the sign of the cross.
I just love that. Let’s watch it again.
For those listening to the audio version of the podcast, the Cajun character touches his forehead, then his left shoulder, then his right shoulder, and then his chest.
That’s not the sign of the cross. That’s the sign of the lightning bolt!
And nothing says, “Hollywood actor,” “fake Cajun,” or “fake Catholic” like the sign of the lightning bolt!
Where the Sign Comes From
Now let’s talk about where the sign of the cross comes from.
The gesture is very old. According to some sources, it dates all the way back to the age of the apostles.
One of these sources is Saint Basil the Great , a bishop and theologian who wrote in the A.D. 300s.
Basil points to the sign of the cross as an example of something Christians received from the apostles as an unwritten tradition, rather than from the written text of Scripture. He writes:
Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit 27 [66]
Of the dogmas and proclamations that are guarded in the Church, we hold some from the teaching of the Scriptures, and others we have received in mystery as the teachings of the tradition of the apostles. Both hold the same power with respect to true religion. No one would deny these points, at least no one who has even a little experience of ecclesiastical institutions. For if we attempt to reject non-scriptural customs as insignificant, we would, unaware, lose the very vital parts of the Gospel, and even more, we would establish the proclamation merely in name. For instance—I will mention the first and most common—who has learned through the Scriptures that those who hope in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ are marked with the sign of the cross?
So Basil the Great holds that making the sign of the cross is an apostolic tradition—meaning, a tradition that has been passed down from the time of the apostles in the first century.
If Basil—writing around the year 374—can treat the sign of the cross as an apostolic custom, then that means the practice was already an old one in his own day.
He wouldn’t think something was an apostolic tradition that had only just been invented.
So we can push its date back by at least a century, back to at least 274.
But we know it was earlier than that, because the custom is mentioned in the writings of Tertullian , around the year 211. He writes:
Tertullian, The Chaplet 3
At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign.
Tertullian thus describes the sign as something Christians were already doing regularly, as a matter of everyday habit.
He thus indicates that the practice was widespread among Christians in his day.
And if it was widespread, then that means we have to push its date back further.
Since Tertullian was writing in the early 200s, we therefore need to push the origin of the sign of the cross back into the second century or A.D. 100s.
But could it go all the way back to the first century—to the apostolic age itself?
It’s by no means impossible, and Tertullian drops a clue that could point in that direction.
Notice that he says we trace the sign upon our forehead.
That means that they were making the small sign of the cross—with their thumbs, like we do at the Gospel reading.
Today, we do it on our forehead, our lips, and our chest. But in Tertullian’s day, they were doing it just on the forehead.
And this small, forehead cross appears to be the original form of the sign.
The larger version we normally make today didn’t develop until later. We start to get evidence for larger forms in the A.D. 300s and 400s.
But we have multiple early sources for the small, forehead version.
So why would early Christians sign themselves on their foreheads?
The Mark of God
The answer is found in the Bible. There are a couple of biblical images that early Christians connected with the practice.
The first is from the prophet Ezekiel.
In a vision, Ezekiel sees God command that angels put a protective mark on the foreheads of the faithful in Jerusalem, before judgment falls on the city.
Ezekiel 9:4 states:
Ezekiel 9:4
And the Lord said to [the angel], “Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.”
Except, in Hebrew it doesn’t just say to put a mark on the righteous men’s foreheads.
The word it uses is tau , and that means something significant. Specifically, it’s the name of the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
Now, in modern Hebrew script, a tau looks kind of like a chair that doesn’t have a back —but that’s in the modern Hebrew writing system.
In the ancient, paleo-Hebrew script that they used in Ezekiel’s day, tau looked quite different. In fact, it looked like the letter X . In other words, it was two crossed lines. It looked like a cross!
So that’s something that early Christians would have noticed—particularly Jewish Christians who were familiar with the book of Ezekiel in the original Hebrew.
Then there are several passages in the book of Revelation that say God’s servants are sealed with a similar mark to protect them from divine wrath.
Revelation 7 states:
Revelation 7:2–3
Then I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.”
Other passages in Revelation indicate that the seal is the name of the Lamb—Jesus—and his Father.
But that’s too much to trace on your own forehead, so early Christians defaulted back to the tau or cross symbol from the book of Ezekiel, with the shape representing Jesus’ cross, the fact that one belongs to Jesus, and the desire to receive God’s protection.
Even without these biblical passages—on the basis of Christ’s crucifixion alone—first century Christians might have started making the sign of the cross.
But with the passages from Ezekiel and Revelation, we have an even more plausible origin for the sign of the cross.
And the fact that you needed to read Hebrew to appreciate the full significance of the Ezekiel passage could suggest that the custom arose very early—when there were still a lot of Jewish Christians who read Hebrew.
Even among Jewish Christians, reading Hebrew was not a given, because most Jews living outside of Palestine didn’t know the language.
That’s how we got the Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament in the first place.
So the most likely people to recognize the connection between the cross and the passage in Ezekiel would be Jewish Palestinian Christians, which could suggest an extremely early date for the sign—an origin with the apostolic age itself.
When the Sign Is Made
When might you make the sign of the cross?
Well, there are certain times when Church law calls for us to make it, beginning with the sacrament of baptism.
The sign is used several times in conjunction with baptism, such as when—at the beginning of the rite—the sign is traced on the forehead of the person to be baptized.
The Catechism states:
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1235
The sign of the cross, on the threshold of the celebration, marks with the imprint of Christ the one who is going to belong to him and signifies the grace of the redemption Christ won for us by his cross.
Of course, the sign is not part of the essential rite of baptism—that’s the application of water—but it is customarily done in conjunction with baptism.
The sign is also used in the sacrament of confirmation, when the bishop traces a cross on the forehead with chrism.
And it’s used on a daily or weekly basis.
The Mass begins with it when the priest and people sign themselves while naming the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Before the Gospel is read, the people trace the small cross on the forehead, the lips, and the heart.
And priests and deacons use it to bless people and objects
Although Church law doesn’t require it, it’s also customary to make it at the beginning and end of a prayer.
But we’re not limited to just those situations.
Saint Cyril of Jerusalem —teaching new Christians in the 300s—urged them to make the sign regularly and without embarrassment.
He says:
Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 13:36
Let us not be ashamed to confess the Crucified. Let the Cross, as our seal, be boldly made with our fingers upon our brow, and on all occasions; over the bread we eat, over the cups we drink; in our comings and in our goings; before sleep; on lying down and rising up; when we are on the way and when we are still.
Similarly, Saint John Chrysostom , a little later, described the same custom and tied it to both ordinary and great moments in life. He says:
John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 54
Whether one is to be new-born, the cross is there; or to be nourished with that mystical food, or to be ordained, or to do anything else, everywhere our symbol of victory is present. Therefore both on house, and walls, and windows, and upon our forehead, and upon our mind, we inscribe it with much care.
So Chrysostom encourages a very liberal use of the sign.
We can thus make it—basically—whenever we want.
The only caution I’d have here is that you should do it when it feels natural.
Do not get scrupulous about this. Do not start building habits that you will start feeling like you must obey or that you are somehow sinning if you don’t.
Outside of the cases when Church law actually requires it, the sign of the cross is purely voluntary.
It’s something that you can do to please God and ask for his protection, but it is not a divine mandate that you must do.
If you start finding yourself worrying that you might be sinning by not making it, that’s actually a sign that you should make it less often in order to fight the habit of scrupulosity.
But—as long as you avoid that—make it whenever you want!
The Words We Say
When Christians make the sign of the cross, they often say something while they do it.
They don’t always do that, though. Sometimes there is no verbal accompaniment for the sign—either out loud or silently.
Sometimes people—including clergy—make the sign of the cross in blessing so quickly that there is no time for a verbal formula.
That may happen when they make it with just a hand.
And it’s certainly common when they make the small form of the sign with just a thumb.
But—at least when people make the large sign of the cross—they often do it slowly enough that they can accompany it with specific words.
For most of us today, that is the Trinitarian formula: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
But it wasn’t always this way, and the words have varied over the centuries.
The gesture has not always been tied to fixed words, though some form of words has usually gone with it.
The earliest formulas were short, and they were not yet about the Trinity.
The Catholic Encyclopedia gives some examples, saying:
The Catholic Encyclopedia, “Sign of the Cross”
In the earlier ages we have evidence for such invocation as “The sign of Christ”, “The seal of the living God”, “In the name of Jesus”; etc. Later we meet “In the name of Jesus of Nazareth”, “In the name of the Holy Trinity”, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost”, “Our help is in the name of the Lord”, [and] “O God come to my assistance”.
So there have been quite a number of formulas that Christians have used, and there is no one, single formula that is mandatory.
The Trinitarian words we commonly use today come from the baptismal one that Jesus gave his disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel.
In Matthew 28, the risen Jesus tells the apostles:
Matthew 28:18–20
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
So when we sign ourselves in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, we are using the same words the Church uses in baptism.
We’re recalling our baptism.
But what does it mean to do something “in the name” of God?
In the Bible, to do something in God’s name is to Act with his authority and to Call on him.
So to make the sign of the cross in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is to place what we are doing under God’s authority and to ask God to be present.
And because the sign we trace is the cross, the gesture also links us to Christ’s own death on the cross.
Saint Paul connects baptism to the cross in this way. In Romans 6, he writes:
Romans 6:3–4
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
So Christ died for us on the cross, and by being baptized we are mystically united to his death on the cross.
We recall our identification with Christ by making the sign of the cross, and so it’s no surprise that the words used for baptism came to be associated with making the sign.
By using the modern formula “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” we are expressing our faith in God, recalling our baptism, and asking for God’s grace and protection.
Now, this could raise a question for some folks: What if I’m not baptized yet? Can I make the sign of the cross?
We’ve already seen that different types of Christians can and do make the sign, so you don’t need to be Catholic.
But what about someone who isn’t baptized?
Actually, they can make the sign of the cross, too.
Using the words of the baptismal formula during the sign establishes a link with it, but those words are not essential to the sign.
As we’ve seen, there are many formulas that have been used in history, and sometimes no formulas at all are used.
The only thing that is essential to the sign is the shape of the cross, and so as long as you have faith in Christ’s death on the cross, making the sign can be appropriate—even if you’re not baptized.
In fact, a Catechumen—that is, a Person preparing for baptism—may even use the baptismal formula in anticipation of the baptism that he will receive.
So making the sign of the cross doesn’t have to look backwards to baptism. It can also look forwards.
And catechumens have historically made the sign of the cross. For example, in the early 400s, St. Augustine wrote:
Augustine, Tractates on John 11:3[4]
Pay attention, my beloved people, and understand. If we say to a catechumen, “Do you believe in Christ?” he answers, “I do believe” and signs himself. He already carries the cross of Christ on his forehead and is not ashamed of the Lord’s cross. Look, he has believed in his name.
And it wasn’t just Augustine. The previous century, St. Cyril of Jerusalem told his catechumens to make the sign. .
That’s what he was doing in his Catechetical Lectures or lectures for catechumens in the quotation we read. He was telling all of the unbaptized people he was teaching—in preparation for baptism—to make the sign of the cross liberally.
So you don’t have to be a Catholic—or even a baptized Christian yet—to make the sign of the cross.
The Right Way?
So what’s the right way to make the sign of the cross?
The answer is that there isn’t one. It doesn’t matter whether you do it large or small. It doesn’t matter whether you do it from left to right or from right to left.
What’s important is that it’s an expression of faith in God and Christ. It’s the attitude of the heart, not what you do with your hands, that God cares about.
Personally, I sometimes make the sign in the Western way—from left to right—and sometimes I make it the Eastern way—from right to left.
What matters to God is not whether I am an Eastern Christian or a Western Christian, but just that I am a Christian.
I also use the smaller forms.
I may make a little cross with my thumb—or I may make the sign over something with my hand, as a quiet, informal way of asking God’s blessing on it.
So there is no need to be scrupulous about the sign of the cross or to worry about doing it wrong.
God sees the intent of the heart and knows what you’re asking him to do, and that’s what’s important.
Conclusion
The sign of the cross is one of the oldest Christian customs.
It reaches back to the second century at least—and quite likely to the first.
It is shared across the Catholic, Orthodox, and even the Protestant world.
And it expresses Christian faith with a gesture by symbolizing the cross of Christ.
It is also a very simple thing to do.
So I would encourage you to make it whenever you feel like it.
You do not have to say anything elaborate—or anything at all—and you do not have to make it any particular way.
It’s simply a way of expressing your faith in Christ.
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