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Fr. Kasel

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross


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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