“He who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (St.
Matt. 10:38).
“And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in
from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross” (St.
Mark 15:21).
“And he said to all, If any man would come after me, let him deny himself
and take up his cross daily and follow me” (St. Luke 9:23).
“So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place
called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha” (St. John
19:17).
“And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient
unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8).
There is no direct reference to the use of the Sign of the Cross in worship in
Scripture. Nevertheless, it would be highly presumptuous to denigrate this
holy practice simply because of this fact, particularly given that Scripture
speaks so highly of the Cross as the instrument of our salvation. The
Church employs the Sign of the Cross when she wishes to bestow the
blessings of God on animate and inanimate creatures. It has also always
been used as a means to mark out Christ’s faithful. In this it has its
prefigurement in the Old Testament: “And the Lord said to him: Go
through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem: and mark
Thau upon the foreheads of the men that sigh, and mourn for all the
abominations that are committed in the midst thereof ... Utterly destroy old
and young, maidens, children and women: but upon whomever you shall
see Thau, kill him not, and begin at my sanctuary” (Ezek. 9:4 & 6). Thau is
the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet and is in the shape of a cross. From
the very beginning, Christians have seen in the Thau a prefigurement of
Christ’s own Cross, and its application on people’s foreheads, the Sign of
the Cross.
Ezekiel 9:4 has its echo in Revelation 7:3: “Do not damage the earth or the
sea or the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal
on their foreheads.” Can this seal be possibly any different from the “sign
of the Son of man” (St. Matt. 24:30), which is the Cross?
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