The sign of the cross (Latin: signum crucis), or 'blessing oneself even 'crossing oneself'(sic), is a ritual blessing made by members of many branches of Christianity. This blessing is made by a priest, religious or individuals by the tracing of an upright cross or + across the body with the right hand, often accompanied by spoken or mental recitation of a trinitarian formula.
The motion is the tracing of the shape of a cross in the air or on one's own body, echoing the traditional shape of the cross of the Christian Crucifixion narrative. There are two principal forms: the one—three fingers, right to left—is exclusively used in the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church of the Byzantine and Chaldean Tradition; the other—left to right, other than three fingers—is the one used in the Latin, Syriac, Syro-Malankara, Armenian, Coptic, Maronite, and Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, Anglicanism, Lutheranism and Oriental Orthodoxy (see below). The ritual is rare within other Christian traditions.
Read more about Sign Of The Cross: Gesture, Use, Origins, Protestant Views
Famous quotes containing the words sign of the, sign of, sign and/or cross:
“An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 12:39.
“It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is an agreeable change to cross a lake, after you have been shut up in the woods, not only on account of the greater expanse of water, but also of sky. It is one of the surprises which Nature has in store for the traveler in the forest. To look down, in this case, over eighteen miles of water, was liberating and civilizing even.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)