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?

Will He allow us to honor the cross of the thief instead of the Cross of the Lord? God Himself will show us the Cross of our Saviour." All three crosses were brought into the house of a pious woman lying on her deathbed. After fervent prayer, the saint in turn placed the crosses on the dying woman. And only by the touch of the latter did the power of life enter the sick woman.

Those present at the miracle unanimously gave glory to the Cross of the Lord. But even this certificate was not enough for the glory of the Life-Giving Cross Tree. It pleased God's Providence that the glory of the Cross of the Lord should shine forth even to those who did not wish to acknowledge it, so that by the power of the Venerable Tree the unbelief and enemies of the Cross of the Lord might be crushed. Returning from the house of the healed woman to Golgotha, the Christians met a funeral procession.

Filled with faith, the pious Saint Macarius boldly applied the Cross of the Lord to the deceased, and the Cross of the Conqueror of death and hell, again breaking the bonds of death, gave life to the deceased. The news of the miracle, which shocked those present, flew around Jerusalem in the twinkling of an eye and gathered believers and non-believers to the foot of the Cross on Golgotha. And countless people wanted to see the miraculous Tree at least from afar.

Saint Macarius and Empress Helena, standing on a dais, raised the Precious Cross as high as possible on all four sides, so that all could bow down to it. The power of the influence of the Life-Creating Tree was so great that the Jews were baptized in great numbers, and among them was the elder Judas, who pointed out the place where the Cross of the Lord was hidden, who received the name Kyriakos in baptism and became bishop of Jerusalem by the mercy of God at the end of his life, and for a short period of his life in Christianity he himself ascended his martyric cross during the reign of Julian the Apostate.

Thus was accomplished the finding of the Cross of the Lord. Three hundred and twenty-six years after the crucifixion of the Savior, the Life-Giving Wood of the Cross of the Lord again became a preacher of the power and Divinity of Christ. "Worthily and righteously venerate the Cross of Christ," says St. Demetrius of Rostov, the Russian Chrysostom, in his homily on the Exaltation of the Cross, "for by this blessed Tree death was slain and life was granted.

By the Tree of Paradise we were slain, but by the Tree of the Cross we were made alive; we are the first to be expelled from paradise, the second we ascend to heaven; the enemy defeated us first, and the enemy defeated us second." After the discovery of the Life-Creating Cross of the Lord, the Equal-to-the-Apostles Emperor Constantine gave orders to erect in Jerusalem a majestic and spacious church in honor of the Resurrection of Christ, which included both the Holy Sepulchre and Golgotha.

The temple was built for ten years and was consecrated on September 13, 335, and the next day the Cross of the Lord was erected in the temple, and on this day it was established to celebrate the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord. And the Church for the first time on this day sang: "We worship Thy Cross, O Master, and glorify Thy holy Resurrection!"