September 14:
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
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.
Quick Facts:
•Date:
September 14
•Type of Feast:
Feast
•Readings:
Numbers 21:4b-9; Psalm 78:1bc-2, 34-35, 36-87, 38; Philippians 2:6-11; John
3:13-17 (full text here)
•Prayers: The
Sign of the Cross
•Other Names
for the Feast: Triumph of the Cross, Elevation of the Cross, Roodmas, Holy
Cross
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.
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