It was not by human invention that this wondrous feast entered the world, which absorbed three events of different times in the history of the Life-Giving Tree, and it has not been preserved in the world for seventeen centuries by human efforts. The Gospel reading of the feast points to the power that constantly and autocratically possesses the changeable and inconstant world.

The power and authority of the Cross is the great sacrifice – the sufferings of the Savior on the Cross, beginning with His unrighteous condemnation to death to the piercing of the rib of His most pure body, from which flowed blood and water, nourishing the world into Eternal Life. And the Gospel ends with the assurance that the truth of this terrible story is attested to by an eyewitness of that sacrifice on Golgotha and is transmitted so that the listeners will believe.

The Orthodox Church, born on the eve of the appearance of the Life-Bearing Cross of the Lord to the world and having become in the person of the Apostles an eyewitness to the great feat of love, even unto death and death on the cross, has since accepted the sign of the Cross as a salvific symbol for the faithful, and not only as a symbol, but as a saving power by which enemies are defeated. Testimonies about the veneration of the Cross of the Lord have been preserved in the apostolic writings that have come down to us and in the writings of the teachers of the Church.

And the living examples of this power, appearing at all times, brought to life a special rule of veneration of the Cross, established at the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which took place in the year 680 in Constantinople. Its 73rd canon reads: "Since the Life-Creating Cross has shown us salvation, it behooves us to use all diligence, so that honor may be given to him through which we have been saved from the ancient Fall."

The first is the terrible and glorious Cross of the Lord, which from an instrument of execution has become an instrument of power and glory. This is the Cross that lifted up from earth to heaven the innocent and voluntary Sufferer Christ the Savior and with Him nailed the sins of the whole world. The Cross, watered with His pure blood and with it washing away all sinful defilement. A cross that absorbed a multitude of malicious glances, mockery and blasphemy.

The Cross, at the foot of which only two people were weeping: the Mother of the Crucified One, by Whose very heart the weapon of the Cross passed, and the only disciple whose love was not frightened away by the horror of suffering. This Cross ascended above the world for a short time, in order to hide in the earth for a long time by the malice of man. But this short time was enough for the Life-Giving Cross to conquer the world and give it life.

By a long and difficult path of humility the Lord Jesus Christ entered into His glory, but the humiliation of the Life-Giving Tree, on which He offered Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, lasted incomparably longer. The glory of the Crucified One had already filled all the ends of the world, and the Life-Giving Wood of the Cross, hidden in ignorance and ignominy, awaited its hour for another three centuries.

Already the Cross crowned the Church of Christ, the sign of the Cross by the power of Christ crucified on it strengthened the human weakness of the first Christians, who went to torture for their faith, and the only Life-Giving and Saving Tree was still hidden from the eyes of men. Christianity expanded and strengthened. Even the powerful of this world were already thinking about the Divine origin of the Crucified One and Ascended to the Cross.

Emperor Constantine the Great was vouchsafed with all his army to see a sign of God - the Cross shining in the sky from the stars and the radiance of the inscription around it: "In this you will conquer." And the sign of the Cross gave him the way to many victories in battle. Such manifestations revived in the minds of Christians the memory of the first Cross of the Lord, and with it the faith that this great shrine could not perish.

By this time the Church had already been filled with many living testimonies of the feats of bearing the cross, and it was so lacking for the triumph, glory, and joy of that one Cross, from which the victory over death shone. And the work of searching for the Cross of the Lord was taken upon herself by the eighty-year-old Helena, the mother of the first Christian emperor Constantine. The Holy Spirit inspired this queen (

later called Equal-to-the-Apostles), to the glory of the Crucified One and to the joy of Orthodox Christians, to exert much labor and effort to find the holy object. The pagan emperors and the malice of the Jews tried to completely destroy in man the memories of sacred events and sacred places where our Lord Jesus Christ suffered for people and rose again.

The Holy Sepulchre and Golgotha were covered with earth, and a pagan pagan temple was erected on the site of an artificial hill. And now the Christian queen was looking for traces of the lost treasure among the Jews hostile to Christianity. And how great is the power and authority of God, you can judge for yourselves: to the queen's question addressed to the elder Jews: "Where did your ancestors hide the Cross of Christ?

They pointed out to her a certain old Jew Judas, who, in response to a repeated question, apparently against his will, brought her to the place of the pagan temple of Venus and said: "In this very place you will find the Cross of your Christ." Judas betrayed Christ to the Cross, and three hundred years later another Judas contributed to the manifestation of the glory of Christ. After the removal of the pagan temple, the search continued for a long time, and hopes were replaced by hopelessness, until the Lord Himself deigned to reveal to people the shrine resting in the ground.

The fragrance of the Holy Spirit, which came from the earth, put an end to the search. But again the pious seekers were perplexed. Instead of the one coveted Cross, they found three, and they were exactly the same. A tablet with an inscription, which was once on the Cross of the Savior, was found later and in another place. Saint Macarius, who together with Empress Helena led the search, exclaimed: "If God's Providence did not deign to leave the Cross of the Lord in the ground forever, then will it allow it to remain in obscurity?