Journey of the Cross

Today is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, also called Roodmas. It celebrates the victory won for humanity by God’s sacrificial love. While the cross was a method of torture and execution, for Christians it serves as a reminder of Christ’s abundant love and mercy for us, to the point that he would humble himself, walk with humanity, and die on that Cross. It is also a radical symbol of victory; a method of torture becomes a symbol of love, and a sign of death becomes a sign of resurrection and new life. The Cross has become the symbol for Christianity.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that we seek to know what happened to the actual cross used for Christ’s Passion or that we want to travel and stand in the spot where He stood, where He died.

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross actually celebrates several events in the life of the veneration of the True Cross.

The first is the finding of the True Cross by St. Helena. According to legend, Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, travelled to the Holy Land in her late 70s from 326-328. There, she researched the places and items associated with Jesus. Her work established many of the pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land and relics shared throughout the Christian world. While there, she discovered a hiding place storing three crosses, said by the local community to be the crosses used at the crucifixion of Jesus and the two thieves, Dismas and Gestas. She was unsure of the crosses’ authenticity. The Bishop of Jerusalem knew of a woman near death; when she was brought to the crosses, she touched the first two, and her condition did not change. When she touched the third, she suddenly recovered.

This confirmed to St. Helena that this was God affirming that this was the legitimate Cross. She took pieces of the True Cross, including the nails, back to Constantine. Confirmed relics of the True Cross come from this cross discovered by St. Helena.

The second event is the dedication of the churches on the sites of the Mount Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre. Again, based on St. Helena’s research, the location of Christ’s crucifixion and burial was established, and Emperor Constantine ordered that churches be built on those spots. According to tradition, the hill of Calvary held a temple to a Roman god, possibly Jupiter or Venus, and Helena had the pagan temple torn down in order to build a Christian church. Containing the places where Christ died for us and where His glorious Resurrection occurred makes them, along with the Church of the Nativity (also established at this time), some of the most sacred Christian sites on earth.

The third event is the restoration of the True Cross to Jerusalem in 629. The Persians had conquered Jerusalem in 614 and damaged several of the Christian churches. Clergymen were tortured, and tens of thousands of people fled the city. The True Cross was taken from the Holy Sepulchre and carried off to Iraq. The Persians had initially sided with the Jews and Samaritans in revolt against the Byzantines, but once they secured the land, they were more willing to negotiate with the Byzantines. The churches were repaired, and in 628, an agreement was made that conquered city and the Holy Cross could remain under control of the Sasanian king Shahrbaraz and his son Niketas, a Christian convert. The Cross was returned to them in Jerusalem in 629. When the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius regained control of the Holy Land the next year, marched in triumph into Jerusalem with the True Cross.

Legend says that when Emperor Heraclius was carrying the Cross into Jerusalem, he was wearing fancy clothes with precious gems to celebrate his victory. But when he reached the entrance to Mount Calvary, he could not move forward. The Bishop of Jerusalem told him, "Consider, O Emperor, that with these triumphal ornaments you are far from resembling Jesus carrying His Cross." Emperor Heraclius changed into a penitential robe and continued the journey.

Regarding of your belief in the authenticity of the legends around the True Cross in the 300-600s, the feast celebrates the power of the Cross, the efficacious symbol of God’s love, the glorious raising of the lowly, and the victory of life over death.