Living in Greece, Part 12

Tuesday, 14 September
Feast of the Elevation of the Precious Cross

Today commemorates the finding of the Holy Cross of Jesus by St. Helena, mother of Emperor St. Constantine the Great. As you know, when he was preparing to go to battle to claim the whole of the Roman Empire, a vision of the Cross appeared in the sky and was seen not only by him, but by his men and many others. He had the cross emblazoned on his soldiers’ tunics and went into battle under the banner of the Cross, and won.

When he had been established as Emperor, he commissioned his Christian mother to go to Jerusalem to find the True Cross.

The place where Jesus had been crucified was known, because an earlier Roman ruler had built a temple there to Venus. So St. Helena directed the hill excavated.

Three crosses were found, but nobody knew which one had been Christ’s. An ingenious test (in my opinion) was devised, in which each cross touched to a moribund woman. When the True Cross touched her, she immediately rose from her deathbed, perfectly well.

St. Helena had the Cross brought to the Patriarch. Then, as throngs of people watched, the Patriarch lifted (elevated) the cross up high, for everyone to see. You can imagine the joy, the tears, and probably the shouts (if Jerusalemites then were anything like Greeks then and now). That day has been a feast of the Eastern Churches every year since. (Okay, not quite. The feast was establihed 15 years later.)

There just aren’t any words to tell you what a blessing it was to celebrate the feast of the Cross in the presence of the actual Holy Cross.

Before Thy Cross, O Lord, we bow down
And we glorify Thy third-day Resurrection.

I didn’t try to count how many times we sang this, but it was enough to give many people sore hips tomorrow from all the prostrations.

I didn’t even mind the crowds so much. Well, I stood by an open door; that’s why. I also spent time in the balcony, where, by reading the names on the nearest icons, I discovered a Saint Coralia. I’m going to have to look into that further. Apparently she was one of the Forty Virgin Martyrs.