Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus,
This coming Saturday, September 14, we celebrate the Feast of the
Exaltation of the Holy Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ! Here is a
brief history of this Feast:
“The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross celebrates three
historical events: the finding of the True Cross by Saint Helena, the
mother of the emperor Constantine; the dedication of churches
built by Constantine on the site of the Holy Sepulchre and Mount
Calvary; and the restoration of the True Cross to Jerusalem by the
emperor Heraclius II. But in a deeper sense, the feast also celebrates
the Holy Cross as the instrument of our salvation. This instrument
of torture, designed to degrade the worst of criminals,
became the life-giving tree that reversed Adam's Original Sin when
he ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the
Garden of Eden.
History of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross: After the
death and resurrection of Christ, both the Jewish and Roman authorities
in Jerusalem made efforts to obscure the Holy Sepulchre,
Christ's tomb in the garden near the site of His crucifixion. The
earth had been mounded up over the site, and pagan temples had
been built on top of it. The Cross on which Christ had died had
been hidden (tradition said) by the Jewish authorities somewhere in
the vicinity.
According to tradition, first mentioned by Saint Cyril of Jerusalem
in 348, Saint Helena, nearing the end of her life, decided under
divine inspiration to travel to Jerusalem in 326 to excavate the Holy
Sepulchre and attempt to locate the True Cross. A Jew by the
name of Judas, aware of the tradition concerning the hiding of the
Cross, led those excavating the Holy Sepulchre to the spot in which
it was hidden.
Three crosses were found on the spot. According to one tradition,
the inscription Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum ("Jesus of Nazareth,
King of the Jews") remained attached to the True Cross. According
to a more common tradition, however, the inscription was
missing, and Saint Helena and Saint Macarius, the bishop of Jerusalem,
assuming that one was the True Cross and the other two
belonged to the thieves crucified alongside Christ, devised an experiment
to determine which was the True Cross.
In one version of the latter tradition, the three crosses were taken to
a woman who was near death; when she touched the True Cross,
she was healed. In another, the body of a dead man was brought to
the place where the three crosses were found, and laid upon each
cross. The True Cross restored the dead man to life.
In celebration of the discovery of the Holy Cross, Constantine ordered
the construction of churches at the site of the Holy Sepulchre
and on Mount Calvary. Those churches were dedicated on September
13 and 14, 335, and shortly thereafter the Feast of the Exaltation
of the Holy Cross began to be celebrated on the latter date. The
Feast slowly spread from Jerusalem to other churches, until, by the year 720, the celebration was universal.
In the early seventh century, the Persians conquered Jerusalem, and
the Persian king Khosrau II captured the True Cross and took it back
to Persia. After Khosrau's defeat by Emperor Heraclius II, Khosrau's
own son had him assassinated in 628 and returned the True Cross to
Heraclius. In 629, Heraclius, having initially taken the True Cross to
Constantinople, decided to restore it to Jerusalem. Tradition says
that he carried the Cross on his own back, but when he attempted to
enter the church on Mount Calvary, a strange force stopped him.
Patriarch Zacharias of Jerusalem, seeing the emperor struggling,
advised him to take off his royal robes and crown and to dress in a
penitential robe instead. As soon as Heraclius took Zacharias' advice,
he was able to carry the True Cross into the church.
For some centuries, a second feast, the Invention of the Cross, was
celebrated on May 3 in the Roman and Gallican churches, following
a tradition that marked that date as the day on which Saint Helena
discovered the True Cross. In Jerusalem, however, the finding of the
Cross was celebrated from the beginning on September 14.” (from
Through the intercession of Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows, St. Joseph,
St. Michael, and St. Paul, may our Lord Jesus grant us the blessings
of the Triumph of His Holy Cross!
In Christ through Mary,
Fr. Kasel
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