He welcomes tips, suggestions, and any other feedback at bealenews at gmail dot com. ‣ ‣ These are the core of why Catholics do the sign of the cross… He is a former news editor at GoLocalProv.com and was a correspondent for the New Hampshire Union Leader, where he covered the 2008 presidential primary. ... Visit the Bible online to search for words if you don’t know the specific passage your’re looking for. In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. All rights reserved. The signum crucis, the sign of the cross, is powerful because it marks us as children of God who have thrown off the slavery of Satan and embraced the Cross of Christ as the way to salvation.The Cross destroyed death and hell, and through it, Jesus redeemed the world. The New American Bible—recognizing that most readers don’t know what a thau is, much less what it looks like—instead says that God instructed the linen-clad man to “mark an X on the foreheads.” Either way, St. Jerome’s interpretation still carries water today in Catholic exegetical circles. The word for its last letter is tav which is also the word for mark. L ‣ The same way, it’s not right to persecute the ones who refuse to make the sign of the cross … Over time, Christians have imbued this small, simple gesture with volumes of theological meaning. Around 1,000 BC—a few hundred years before the writing of Ezekiel—it still had a cross-shape but was more like St. Andrew’s Cross. The word Bible is not biblical since it cannot be found there. ‣ It is known either in the form of the Greek cross … And she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! Specifically, around 2,000 BC the letter was shaped like St. George’s Cross. cross, The evidence is hidden in a book whose very name suggests the unveiling of concealed concealed—a book so filled with tales of beasts, a seven-headed dragon, horse-like locusts, and a two hundred million-strong army of fire-breathing steeds that you might have missed where it talks about anything like the Sign of the Cross: the Book of Revelation. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. The Sign of the Cross simply affirms in gestures the core of the creed—the existence of the Trinity and the crucifixion of Jesus. In the verse as quoted above, that interpretation is inserted where an ellipsis reads above. St. Francis, who attended the council, was reportedly so inspired that he embraced the tau (the Greek letter that is the counterpart to the Hebrew letter tav) as the emblem of his order, according to historian Warren Carroll. Obadiah 1:14 | View whole chapter | See verse in context Neither shouldest thou have stood in the cross way, to cut off those of his that did escape; neither shouldest thou have delivered up those of his that … Over the centuries, this interpretation of Ezekiel 9:4 has been taken seriously by saints and scholars alike. As then-Cardinal Ratzinger once described it, the Sign of the Cross as the “summing up and re-acceptance of our baptism.”. Such baptismal language strengthens the connection with the Sign of the Cross, which is accompanied by the words, “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”—the same words with which we are baptized. So, for example, the last letter in our alphabet is Z, but the word for Z is actually zee. P | R. Jared Staudt, PhD, The Lost Riches of Catholic Catechisms with Aaron Seng of Tradivox, The Catholic Faith in Public Life After the 2020 Election with Derek Rotty. The Theological Meaning of the Sign of the Cross. Saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.”. The Bible teaches that there was a crucial event, the event of the cross… In Revelation 14:1, John sees the same assembly of believers with the “name” of the Father and Son on their foreheads. Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads. In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed … The Cross is a great contradiction. E I always smile at what one considers biblical or not biblical without the … “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. What about this Sign of the Cross would not be biblical?? ‣ Holydivine . M Commentators, both Catholic and Protestant, have seen Revelation 7:3 as an allusion back to Ezekiel 9:4, where we read God’s instructions to a linen-clad man in one of the prophet’s visions: “Lord said to him: Pass through the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and mark … the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the abominations practiced within it.”. Best of Week, OpenBible.info All this is to say that the Sign of the Cross is indeed a distinctly Catholic (and Orthodox) practice, but it is also one that is deeply rooted in both the Old and New Testaments. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. Publication date: Dec 17, 2020. crossing self, Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. His areas of interest include Eastern Christianity, Marian and Eucharistic theology, medieval history, and the saints. Geocoding Z. O Often these words contain they letter they are naming. ‣ Symbolical Uses of the Cross: (1) Extra-Scriptural. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN and the Today Show and his writing has been published in the Washington Times, Providence Journal, the National Catholic Register and on MSNBC.com and ABCNews.com. The Christian faith is distinctively Trinitarian and cross-shaped. The sacramental imagery is unmistakable: it is through baptism that our membership in the Church is “sealed.” And it is in baptism that we receive the “first installment,” if you will, of graces to come through life in the Church—particularly through frequent prayer and reception of the other sacraments. rosʹ] never means two pieces of timber placed across one another … The making of the sign of the cross, professing faith both in the redemption of Christ and in the Trinity, was practiced from the earliest centuries. 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