Is Making the Sign of the Cross Found in the Bible?

Even the Lutherans and some Anglicans make the Sign of the Cross. It's also big in the East, though we do it right to left, instead of left to right.

From Aleteia

By Philip Kosloski

Christians have been making the sign of the cross over their bodies for centuries, and the practice has roots in the early Church.

One of the most distinctive practices of both Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians is the making of the Sign of the Cross over one's body.

This custom is typically performed before and after prayer, though some cultures have extended its practice to before doing just about anything. This is one of the reasons why you might see a baseball player making the Sign of the Cross when he is preparing to hit the ball.

Yet, while this tradition has become an ingrained part of Catholic culture, many wonder about its origins and if it is found in the Bible.

A brief history of the Sign of the Cross

After Jesus was crucified on the cross, his early followers began to see the cross as a source of life and salvation. St. Paul wrote often about the cross of Christ in his letters and how it became a symbol of glory, "But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (Galatians 6:14).

What was a means of torture became a sign of eternal salvation. While this is now so normal to us we don't even think about it, initially it would have been a sign of faith in God's mysterious ways. To help us imagine it, perhaps think of wearing some other sign of torture and death as a symbol -- an electric chair, for example, or a noose.

However, early Christians realized that the cross was not only Jesus' "throne" but also has been beautifully and poetically foreshadowed in the Old Testament, particularly by the fact that Genesis places a tree in the Garden of Eden. It was through a tree that death arrived in God's creation, and through a tree (the cross) that life reclaimed us.

Biblical roots

Strictly speaking there is no instruction manual in the Bible that tells followers to make the Sign of the Cross over their bodies. However, St. John does note in the book of Revelation how Christians will be marked with a specific symbol on their foreheads, "they were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green growth or any tree, but only those of mankind who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads" (Revelation 9:4).

This may have been a reference to an earlier passage in the book of Ezekiel, where God said, "Go through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark upon the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it" (Ezekiel 9:4).

That mark was believed to be the Greek letter tau, which is a T, and was quickly adopted by Christians to be related to the sign of the cross.

With this biblical background in mind, it shouldn't be a surprise that the early Christians would initially make the Sign of the Cross over their foreheads. Tertullian wrote in the 2nd century, "We Christians wear out our foreheads with the sign of the cross."

Gradually this motion of making the sign of the cross was extended, until it finally became a much larger motion that encompasses the head, shoulders, and chest -- as if we are clothing ourselves with the cross, or being embraced by it.

While the Bible does not specifically instruct Christians to make the sign of the cross, it is a custom that developed in the first few centuries of the Church and has biblical foundations that make it a potent tradition many Christians have incorporated into their daily lives.