|
|
 When
God restored peace to His Church by exalting Constantine the Great to the
imperial throne, that pious prince, who had triumphed over his enemies by
the miraculous power of the Cross of Christ, was very desirous of expressing
his veneration for the holy places which had been honored and sanctified by
the presence and sufferings of our blessed Redeemer on earth. He accordingly
resolved to build a magnificent church in the city of Jerusalem.
Saint Helen, the Emperor’s mother, desiring to visit the holy places there,
made a journey into Palestine in 326, though she was at that time near
eighty years of age. On her arrival at Jerusalem she was inspired with a
great desire to find the identical cross on which Christ had suffered for
our sins, in order to build the proposed church on the site of Calvary. But
there was no mark or tradition, even among the Christians, to show where it
might lie. Saint Helen consulted everyone in Jerusalem and the surrounding
areas, whom she thought likely to assist her in discovering the cross. She
was credibly informed that, if she could find the holy sepulchre, she would
also find the instruments of the punishment, since it was the custom among
the Jews to dig a pit near the place where the body of a criminal was
buried, and to throw into it whatever had contributed to his execution.
The Roman pagans who were dominated by an aversion to Christianity had done
what they could to conceal the place where our Saviour was buried by heaping
on it a great quantity of stone and rubbish, and building there a temple to
Venus. They had also erected a statue of Jupiter in the place where Our Lord
rose from the dead. The pious Empress therefore ordered the profane
buildings to be pulled down, the statue broken in pieces, and the rubbish
removed. And then, upon digging to a great depth, the holy sepulchre was
uncovered.
Near it were found three crosses and the nails which had pierced Our
Saviour’s body, with the title which had been fixed to His cross. By this
discovery they knew that one of those three crosses was the one they sought,
and that the others belonged to the two criminals between whom Our Saviour
had been crucified. But because the title was found separate from the cross,
it was difficult to distinguish which of the three crosses was the one on
which our Redeemer consummated His sacrifice for the salvation of the world.
In this perplexity the holy Bishop of Jerusalem Macarius, knowing that one
of the principal ladies of the city lay ill and at the point of death,
suggested to the Empress to have the three crosses carried to the sick
person, not doubting that God would reveal which one was the cross they
sought. Saint Macarius prayed that God would have regard to their faith, and
then he applied the crosses, one after another, to the patient. She was
immediately and perfectly cured by the touch of the True Cross, after the
others had been tried without effect.
Saint Helen, full of joy at having found the treasure which she had so
earnestly sought and so highly esteemed, built a church on the site and
placed the cross there with great veneration, after providing for it an
extraordinarily rich silver reliquary. She afterwards carried part of it to
her son Constantine at Constantinople, who received it with great
veneration; and another part she took to Rome, to be placed in the church
which she built there, called Church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem, where
it remains to this day.
The title was sent by Saint Helen to that church in Rome, and placed on the
top of an arch, where it was found in a case of lead in 1492. The
inscription in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin is in red letters, and the wood was
whitened. So it was in 1492; but these colors have since faded, and the
words Jesus and Judaeorum are eaten away. The board is nine inches long, but
is considered to have measured about twelve originally.
The reliquary of Jerusalem was committed to the care of Saint Macarius and
kept with singular care and respect in the magnificent church which Saint
Helen and her son built there. Saint Paulinus relates that, though chips
were almost daily cut off from it and given to devout persons, yet the
sacred wood suffered thereby no diminution. It is affirmed by Saint Cyril of
Jerusalem, twenty-five years after the discovery, that pieces of the cross
were spread all over the earth; he compares this wonder to the miraculous
feeding of five thousand men, as recorded in the Gospel. The discovery of
the cross would have happened in the spring, after navigation began on the
Mediterranean Sea, for Saint Helen went the same year to Constantinople and
from there to Rome, where she died in the arms of her son on the 18th of
August of the same year, 326.
|
|
