|
Answer:
Dr. Alexander Roman
alex@unicorne.org
The most frequent hand sign that one would see in Eastern icons is the one
where the fingers are specially joined for purposes of giving a blessing.
This is the same way a priest or a bishop would join his fingers to bless
anyone or anything.
And there are two slightly different versions of the "blessing hand."
One involves joining the thumb and last two fingers together, while
extending the index and middle fingers, with the middle finger bent down
to the level of the index finger.
The three fingers so joined symbolize the Most Holy Trinity. The bent
middle finger signifies that the Son of God "bent" the heavens, as the
Psalms say, and came down to earth to become Man of the Holy Spirit and
the Most Holy Virgin Mary - Christ's Humanity is signified by the index
finger.
Thus, these two fingers represent Christ Himself, One of the Holy Trinity
and Incarnate God.
The other, slightly varied, form of the blessing hand is shown when the
thumb and second finger from the little finger are either joined together
or else crossed over to represent an "X." The little finger at the end of
the hand is then bent over.
This form represents the first and last letters of "Jesus Christ" in Greek
or "IC XC."
The extended index finger represents the "I" and the bent middle finger
represents the "C" or "S."
The Slavic Churches favour the first form of the blessing hand, while the
Greek Churches favour the second - although one may find either in both.
The Old Believers of Eastern Europe affirm that, originally, all
Christians, even the laity, would have shaped their hands in the first
form to bless themselves with the Sign of the Cross, using the Jesus
Prayer, rather than the Trinitarian invocation - and they do so to this
day.
In fact, it is rare to find icons of saints crossing themselves using the
three-finger hand shape.
In the Roman Catholic Church, only the Pope today blesses using one of the
above two methods of blessing hands while Latin priests and bishops use
the whole hand - as do the laity as well.
We know that the Western Catholic laity used to bless themselves in the
Orthodox manner, that is, with three fingers, until it was supplanted by
means of the whole hand sometime in the thirteenth century.
Pope Innocent III, the pope visited by St Francis of Assisi, himself wrote
an instruction and defence of the Sign of the Cross with three fingers
(and going to the right and then to the left shoulder). This instruction
was later printed in many Eastern Catholic prayerbooks, especially in
Ukraine, as a way to defend the traditional Eastern hand position for the
Sign of the Cross against the later Latin one.
The reason why the Roman Catholic laity began blessing themselves with the
whole hand and going to the left first was that they began to imitate
their priests who blessed their congregations in this way.
The Latin priests used the whole hand since the above methods were allowed
only for bishops to use and then still later for the Pope alone. And when
they blessed the faithful, the priests would, as all priests do, bless
from left to right as they faced their congregations - since they moved in
the same direction as the faithful would when they crossed themselves from
right to left.
And so the practice of moving from left to right in the Latin Church came
to be accepted and is its tradition today.
The theology of the symbolism of the blessing hand seems to have changed
as well. Now popes give their blessing by extending their thumb and first
two fingers upwards, while bending down the last two fingers - reminiscent
of the Orthodox way of signing oneself with the Sign of the Cross!
This is also how the papal Swiss Guard shape their hands when they take
their oath to guard the pope on their military standard.
|
