“We proclaim the Crucified and the devils quake. So don’t be ashamed of the cross of Christ. Openly seal it on your forehead that the devils may behold the royal sign and flee trembling far away. Make the sign of the cross when you eat or drink, when you sit, lie down or get up, when you speak, when you walk – in a word, at every act.” St. Cyril of Jerusalem (4th century, Doctor of the Church)

“What else is the sign of Christ but the cross of Christ? For unless that sign be applied, whether it be to the foreheads of believers, or to the very water out of which they are regenerated, or to the oil with which they receive the anointing chrism, or to the sacrifice that nourishes them, none of them is properly administered.” St. Augustine (4th-5th centuries, Doctor of the Church)

“The sign of Christ and His cross are a great thing, and for this reason should signify something great and precious.” St. Caesarius of Arles (5th-6th centuries)

“The royal banners forward go; The cross shines forth in mystic glow; Where He in flesh, our flesh Who made, Our sentence bore, our ransom paid..O tree of beauty! Tree of light! O tree with royal purple bright! Elect on Whose triumphal breast Those holy limbs should find their rest! On Whose dear arms, so widely flung, The weight of this world’s ransom hung: The price of human kind to pay, And spoil the spoiler of his prey.” St. Venantius Fortunatus (6th-7th centuries)

“Once as the tree of torture known – now the bright gate to Jesus’ throne.” St. Peter Damian (11th century, Doctor of the Church)

“The law that is perfect because it takes away all imperfections is charity, and you find it written with a strange beauty when you gaze at Jesus your Savior stretched out like a sheet of parchment on the Cross, inscribed with wounds, illustrated in His loving blood. Where else…is there a comparable book of love to read from?” Bl. Jordan of Saxony (12th-13th centuries)

“Christians must lean on the Cross of Christ just as travelers lean on a staff when they begin a long journey. They must have the Passion of Christ deeply embedded in their minds and hearts, because only from it can they derive peace, grace, and truth.” St. Anthony of Padua (12th-13th centuries, Doctor of the Church)

“Apart from the cross, there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.” St. Rose of Lima (16th-17th centuries)

“Only Christ on the Cross reconciles that shattering contradiction of life symbolized by the upright bar, and death symbolized by the horizontal bar. The Cross is the ‘yes’ of God meeting the ‘no’ of man. Christ alone pulls them both together by making death the stepping stone to life.” Ven. Fulton Sheen (19th-20th centuries)

“The cross was an instrument of torture and disgrace for the man condemned. The cross was a chosen sign. In it the vertical and the horizontal meet; it is thus an expression of the most profound interaction of the divine and the human. It is at this point of intersection, symbolic but also real, that we find the sacrificial Lamb of God, the God-man.” Pope St. John Paul II (20th-21st centuries)