Learning from Cyril of Jerusalem: The Ancient Practice of the Sign of the Cross 

Catechetical Lecture 13
On the words, Crucified and Buried.
Isaiah 53:1, 7

In the year AD 350, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, a prominent bishop and teacher in the early Church known for his detailed catechetical instruction to new Christians, stood before a gathering of newly baptized believers and exhorted them with these words: 

“Let us not be ashamed to confess the Crucified. Be the cross our seal, made with boldness by our fingers on our brow and in everything; over the bread we eat and the cups we drink, in our comings in and goings out, before sleep, when we lie down and when we rise up, when we are in the way, and when we are still” (Lecture 13.36).

Making the sign of the cross was a customary practice of believers in the 4th century. It was a visible, public witness of allegiance to Christ. Cyril wasn’t innovating—he was passing down a practice the early Church had already received. This wasn’t a “Roman Catholic” practice. Rome had bishops, yes—but so did Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. Cyril was the bishop of Jerusalem, and his call to make the sign of the cross predates any later divisions.

Cyril wasn’t innovating—he was passing down a practice the early Church had already received.

In his lecture, Cyril boldly proclaimed that the cross is our only boast, the source of our glory, and the sign of Christ’s victory over death. He urged his people not only to believe in Christ crucified but to confess Him publicly—and to do so with their very bodies by tracing the cross upon themselves.

We ought to follow Cyril's exhortation and recover this ancient practice. Let us not be ashamed of the cross of Christ. Let us mark ourselves with its sign in worship and in all of life—when we pass the baptismal font, when we say the Name of the Trinity, when we rise in the morning or lie down at night.

Let us not be ashamed of the cross of Christ. Let us mark ourselves with its sign in worship and in all of life. . .

If Christians raise their hands while singing or bow their heads and close their eyes in prayer, how much more can we, with full hearts, glory in the cross by tracing it on our bodies? This is not superstition. It is a powerful reminder that we worship not as disembodied spirits but as whole persons—body and soul united—expressing our faith physically as well as spiritually. The Christian life is not ghostly. It is not an ethereal, spiritualized abstraction. The Christian life is enfleshed. It is physical. It is earthy. It is material. 

Making the sign of the cross is bold confession.

Making the sign of the cross is bold confession. It is ancient Christian practice. It is expressing our theology of the cross with our bodies and not just with our spirits.  

Let the cross be our seal. Let it be our glory. Let it be our witness. For, as Cyril writes, “Every deed of Christ is a cause of glorying to the catholic Church, but her greatest of all glorying is in the cross; and knowing this, Paul says, ‘But God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of Christ’” (Galatians 6:14).