A REFLECTION FOR THE INVENTION OF HOLY CROSS
St.
Helen was the mother of the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine. In the year 326 she traveled to the Holy City
of Jerusalem, filled with zeal to rid the place of the pagan shrines and idols
which the Romans had erected at the Christian holy sites in order to discourage
the new religion. When she arrived, the
Bishop of Jerusalem told her that the pagan shrines had been there so long that
Christians would no longer even go near these places of demonic worship.
St.
Helen set to work, ripping down the idol of Adonis that stood over the cave in
Bethlehem where Christ was born. She
tore down the statue of Jupiter, king of the false gods, that had been
blasphemously placed over the Holy Sepulchre where Christ had risen from the
dead. When she turned her attention to
the summit of Mount Calvary, she found the site of the crucifixion to have been
desecrated by a large marble idol of Venus, the goddess of carnal lust. When she had cleansed the place from its
sacrilegious statue, she told her workers to excavate a deep ditch to find the
Cross of Jesus.
As
you would expect, they discovered three crosses buried there, and at a distance
apart, the wooden panel inscribed with the words Jesus of Nazareth, King of
the Jews in the three languages of Hebrew, Greek and Latin. The problem was that no one could identify which
of the three crosses was that of our Lord and which belonged to the two thieves
who had been crucified with him. Macarius,
Bishop of Jerusalem, offered solemn prayers to God and then touched each cross
to a woman who was afflicted with a grievous disease. When the third cross touched her, she was
immediately healed, and it was now clear which of the crosses was the holy
relic St. Helen had set out to find.
The
Emperor’s mother brought the True Cross back to Rome, along with other relics
she had collected in the Holy Land. She
placed them in a chapel of the imperial palace, which was later expanded and designated
as a basilica. It is known today by the
name Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, and is one of the seven pilgrimage
churches of Rome. Its Chapel of the
Relics contains pieces of the True Cross, the I.N.R.I. panel, two thorns from
Jesus’s crown, a nail that was used in the crucifixion, a piece of the cross of
the good thief, the finger of St. Thomas that he had placed in Jesus’s wound, and
a piece of the pillar at which Jesus had been scourged.
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