Feast of the Cross

Painting showing St Helena discovering the cross of Jesus.

Today the church commemorates the day when St Helena found the cross on which Jesus was crucified. Being the mother of Emperor Constantine, who ended the persecutions in 313AD, Helena was determined to find the abandoned cross on which Jesus was crucified. The excavations actually found three crosses buried in Jerusalem close to Mount Calvary. To verify which was the actual cross of Christ, they asked a sick person to touch each cross.  When she touched the third one, the person was completely healed, and thereby they concluded which was Jesus' cross. The Cross of Christ dominates our lives in many ways. So many of us start meetings, classes, trips, and gatherings with the sign of the cross. Passing by a cemetery, you see hundreds of crosses lining up the entire area. If you’re in Arlington Cemetery in Washington DC, the crosses number in the thousands. This feast is also called the Finding of the Cross, the Exaltation of the Cross, or the Triumph of the Cross. We all have crosses to carry, but when we are given a cross, we are also given the strength to carry them through our lives. And if we feel it’s too heavy a cross to carry,  Jesus is close to us to help us carry its weight.