From the Pastor's Desk:

On Wednesday, September 14th we celebrate both in the Roman as well as in the Orthodox Catholic Church the Feast of the Exultation of the Holy Cross of Christ.

After the death and resurrection of Christ, both the Jewish and Roman authorities in Jerusalem took extreme efforts to obscure Christ's tomb in the garden near the site of His crucifixion, (Holy Sepulchre). They used tons of earth to cover over the site, and then built a pagan temple on top of it. The Cross on which Christ had died had been hidden (tradition said) by the Jewish authorities somewhere in the area.

According to tradition, first mentioned by Saint Cyril of Jerusalem in 348, Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, nearing the end of her life, decided under divine inspiration to travel to Jerusalem in 326 to search for 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 Holy Sepulchre and the Cross, led those excavating the Holy Sepulchre and to the area where the cross might be hidden.

Three crosses were found on the spot. According to common tradition, the inscription was missing from the cross.  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 of the three crosses was the True Cross.

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.