What is the correct way of making the Sign of the Cross?

[Volodymyr]

When we were little our mom taught us to start at the forehead, where your brain is, for the Father knows all; then down to the abdomen (I guess in my culture we took it all the way down ), for the Son is the Fruit of the Womb; then left shoulder to right shoulder, for the Holy Spirit is your Shield; and finally the “kiss” that ridesawhitehors mentioned.

Also Law of God (Zakon bojhij) which childen learn teaching us: we bring together the fingers of our right hand thus: three first fingers (big finger, indicator finger and middle finger) touching at their tips, and the two remaining (unnamed finger and minimal fnger) are held to the palm.

The three first fingers together express our faith in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and the Uniphyseal and unseparable trinity. The two fingers touching the palm significate that the Son of God at his descent to earth had two natures: Divine and Human.

We make the sign of the cross by touching the three gathered fingers to the frontalis meaning the sanctification of our mind, then the belly (chrevo) to show sanctification of our internal sensualities and then our right and left shoulders to allow sanctification of our bodiy strengths.

Of course one can read in Rossian history about the death of Bojarina Morozolva and the Protopop Aavakum because they refused to adopt this form of crossing. They used old Russian (drenerusski) style: using the indicator finger and middle finger to touch the forehead. Famous picture of Morozova being dragged to her death holding her two fingers up to show her faithfulness to old devotional style.

 

[romano]

Volodymyr:

When we were little our mom taught us to start at the forehead, where your brain is, for the Father knows all; then down to the abdomen (I guess in my culture we took it all the way down ), for the Son is the Fruit of the Womb; then left shoulder to right shoulder, for the Holy Spirit is your Shield; and finally the “kiss” that ridesawhitehors mentioned.

Hi Volodymyr:

Fascinating post! Thank you!

 

[romano]

ridesawhitehors:

There are a LOT of latinos in our diocese and you see lots of fancy variations to the SOTC. In fact I have adopted the “kiss of the cross” at the end of the sign, and occasionally blow a kiss to Our Lady also - but not at Mass .

Hi ridesawhitehors:

Thank you. This is something I didn’t know about until you and Volodymyr mentioned it. Interestingly, the Spanish Jesuit priest who performed the Mass at my local church yesterday (Holy Trinity Sunday) took the opportunity, in his sermon on the Holy Trinity, to give us a lesson on the various ways of making the SOTC. He ended by demonstrating this blowing a kiss to Our Lady gesture with a great Spanish flourish. His conclusion seemed to be that it doesn’t really matter what way you do the SOTC so long as you do it with reverence and not sloppily because it has very deep significance.