In the name of the Father,
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit
℟ Amen.

Invoking the powerful names of the persons of the Blessed Trinity, recognizing the holy presence of our Triune God, we trace the Cross with our right hand open, fingers joined, in a gesture of God’s Blessing, from the forehead, down to the heart, then to our left shoulder, then to our right shoulder (See the Ceremonial for Bishops no. 108, note 81).

“The most basic Christian gesture in prayer is and always will be the sign of the Cross. It is a way of confessing Christ crucified with one’s very body” (Benedict XVI, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p.191).

With the sign of the Cross, we unite ourselves to our Triune God, to Christ’s Mystical Body, with Christ as the head (CCC§789).

The Cross, the folly of human wisdom, turned the tree into an instrument of shameful torture and execution (1 Corinthians 1:18). For Christians, the cross is not a shame but rather glory in the signum Christi, in the suffering yet redemptive passion, death, and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:13).

“To seal oneself with the sign of the Cross is a visible and public Yes to Him who suffered for us; to Him who in the body has made God’s love visible, even to the utmost; to the God who reigns not by destruction but by the humility of suffering and love, which is stronger than all the power of the world and wiser than all the calculating intelligence of men.
The sign of the Cross is a confession of faith: I believe in Him who suffered for me and rose again; in Him who has transformed the sign of shame into a sign of hope and of the love of God that is present with us.
The confession of faith is a confession of hope: I believe in Him who in his weakness is the Almighty; in Him who can and will save me even in apparent absence and impotence.
By signing ourselves with the Cross, we place ourselves under the protection of the Cross, hold it in front of us like a shield that will guard us in all distress of daily life and give us the courage to go on.
We accept it as a signpost that we follow: ‘If any would come after me…take up your cross and follow me’ (Mark 8:34). The Cross shows us the way of life – the imitation of Christ” (Benedict XVI, The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 191-192).

This sign has been used in the initiation of Christians since the time
of Christ’s Apostles. Saint Paul explained that we bear the mark of Christ on our body (Galatians 6:17). Luke’s Gospel (9:23) tells us that we must take up our cross daily to follow Christ.

The Cross is a reminder of our Baptism, a sign of entering into Christ’s Passion and Christ’s Resurrection. “It is…the saving staff that God holds out to us, the bridge by which we can pass over the abyss of death, and all the threats of the Evil One, and reach God. It is made present in Baptism, in which we become contemporary with Christ’s Cross and Resurrection. Whenever we make the sign of the Cross, we accept our Baptism anew; Christ from the Cross draws us, so to speak, to Himself (John 12:32) and thus into communion with the living God. For Baptism and the sign of the Cross, which is a kind of summing up and re-acceptance of Baptism, are above all a divine event: the Holy Spirit leads us to Christ, and Christ opens the door to the Father. God is no longer the ‘unknown god;’ He has a Name. We are allowed to call upon Him, and He calls us” (Benedict XVI, The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 192).

In making this sign, we mark ourselves as claimed disciples living life for Christ. We confess our Faith and defend ourselves from the works of the devil or our own self-indulgence.

“Thus we can say that in the sign of the Cross, together with the invocation of the Trinity, the whole essence of Christianity is summed up” (Benedict XVI, The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 192; see also here).