My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
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ON SEPTEMBER 14th OUR HOLY ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN CHURCH CELEBRATES THE HOLY FEAST OF THE EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS
Emperor Constantine the Great was born in 273/274 and reposed in Nicomedia in 337 A.D., sharing his feast with his mother, Saint Helen, equal-to-the Apostles, on the 31st of May. He distinguished himself in his youth in the service of Diocletian (284-305 A.D.) in the Egyptian and Persian wars. After those campaigns, he went to Gaul and Britain. After three battles he defeated Maxentius at last in October of 312 A.D. at the Milvian Bridge near Rome, making Constantine the sole ruler of the West.
Although the precise day when Constantine miraculously beheld the Cross is not known, it surely took place shortly before the splendid victory over Maxentius near Rome. The Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea, after interviewing Constantine about the event, writes that on Constantine's march from Gaul to Italy, the Augustus, while praying to the True God for Light and help at this crucial moment, saw, together with his men, while it was still daylight toward evening, a shining cross in the heavens above the sun, with the inscription: "By this conquer" (Gk. "En touto Nika"). Eusebius leaves us with the impression that the inscription was in Greek. The following night Christ Himself appeared to Constantine in his sleep and directed him to have a standard prepared in the form of this sign of the Cross. He was then commanded to advance against Maxentius and all other enemies. The standard bore the Christian Cross with the Greek monogram of Christ, X (Chi) and P (Rho), the first two letters of the name of Christ. The Emperor disclosed to Eusebius that none of its bearers was ever wounded by the enemy.
Most accounts have it that his mother Helen, to whom he always showed great honor, may have planted the seed of the Christian faith in her son, as Theodoretos of Kyros or Cyrrhus claims in his Ecclesiastical History 323-428 A.D.
Constantine became the sole head of the whole Roman Empire by his victory over his Eastern colleague and brother-in-law Licinius.
Saint Helen Finds the True Cross
In 325 A.D., Constantine summoned the First Ecumenical Synod at Nicaea, which he attended and which banished the heretical Arians. When the priests had returned home, the Emperor rejoiced at the unity restored in the Church. He surrounded the city previously called Byzantium with massive walls and adorned the city with various edifices. Having rendered it equal to imperial Rome, he named it Constantinople, establishing by law that it should be designated New Rome. He also built two churches which he named after The Holy Peace (Eirene) of God and the Holy Apostles. The Emperor now wished that a house of prayer should be erected at Jerusalem, near the place called Calvary or Golgotha.
Saint Ambrose (339-397 A.D.), Bishop of Milan, says, "Blessed was Constantine with such a mother! At her son's command, she sought the aid of divine favor in order that he might take part safely in battles and not fear danger. O noble woman, who found much more to confer upon an emperor than she might receive from an emperor! The mother, solicitous for her son to whom the sovereignty of the Roman world had fallen, hastened to Jerusalem and explored the scene of the Lord's Passion."
Her son avidly supported her holy and divinely-inspired mission to journey to the site of old Jerusalem, where the Romans had built the new town called Aelia. Eusebius reports that her son gave her authority over the imperial treasury, to use and dispense monies according to her own will and discretion in every case. Upon her arrival, straightway, she had the temple of Aphrodite pulled down to clear the site of Golgotha. After the temple debris was hauled out of Jerusalem, the question of the exact location of the Holy Cross needed to be addressed.
Now it was no easy matter to discover either this holy relic or even the Lord's Sepulchre. "The pagans," records the fifth-century historian Sozomen, "who in former times persecuted the Church, took every measure to exterminate it. They had concealed that spot under much heaped-up earth, and elevated what before was quite depressed, as it looks now; and, the more effectually to conceal them, had enclosed the entire place of the Resurrection and Mount Calvary within a wall, and had moreover ornamented the whole locality and paved it with stone, and erected a temple to Aphrodite, and set up a little image so that those who sent to worship Christ would appear to bow the knee to the goddess Aphrodite." The biographer and historian Sulpitius Severus (360-420 A.D.) in his Sacred History says that "the consecration of the Cross, owing to the opposition of the Jews, had been covered over by the rubbish of the ruined city." Blessed Jerome (347--419 A.D.) adds, "From the time of Hadrian to the reign of Constantine--a period of about one hundred and eighty years--the spot which had witnessed the Resurrection was occupied by a figure of Venus was set up by the heathen (pagans) and became an object of worship.
The Augusta Saint Helen secured the help of a certain Jew named Judah, who preserved the ancient legacy of the site of the Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, and who pointed out the east side of the burial cave to the Augusta. According to Sozomen, Judah dwelt in the East and derived his information from some documents which had come to him by paternal inheritance. Together with Bishop Makarios of Jerusalem (331-335 A.D.)--who previously took the Augusta on a tour of the principal shrines--and his entourage they made their way to the site of Golgotha. Bishop Makarios conducted a prayer service.
Now after many weeks of excavation, a beautiful flower was found growing in an area that was lonely and abandoned. The Augusta noticed that no other plants were growing in the vicinity. Enlightened by God, she ordered her soldiers to concentrate digging at the exact spot where the unusual flower, now called in English "Sweet Basil" ( Gk.Vasiliko), had taken root. The name, signifying royalty, also came to be the official flower was used by clergymen when blessing homes or during Church services whenever the blessing of the waters takes place.
As the diggers went deeper into the earth, they began to detect a fragrant scent emitting from underground. The Augusta gave orders for the digging to continue. To general astonishment, but precisely as the queen alone had believed, deep digging opened up cavities in the earth and revealed the secret of the hidden Cross. The earth yielded up three crosses, the placard, and the nails. The custom at that time was to bury the implements of torture close to the site of suffering. The inscription, however, had been wrenched from the True Cross and cast aside. The Cross of Jesus had been cast aside with the others, without any distinction. (Source: The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church)
(To be continued)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" - Saint John Chrysostom
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry)
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George