The Finding of the True Cross and the Nails by the Holy Empress Helen (326)
The pagan Roman emperors strove to root out once and for all from people’s minds the memory of the holy places where our Saviour Jesus Christ was crucified and rose again. The Emperor Hadrian (117–138) ordered Golgotha and the Saviour’s Tomb to be covered with earth, and an altar to the pagan deities Venus and Jupiter to be set up on top.
By the will of God, three hundred years later, the greatest Christian holy things, the Tomb of the Saviour and the life-giving Cross, were revealed again to the faithful. This happened in the time of the Emperor Constantine the Great, Equal to the Apostles (commemorated 21 May), who was the first to stop the persecution of Christians and later declared Christianity the religion of the state. In 313 he issued the Edict of Milan, by which the Christian religion was made lawful and the persecution of Christians in the western part of the empire ceased. Licinius signed the Edict of Milan, but went on persecuting Christians. Only after his final defeat did the law on religious toleration take effect in the East. With God’s help the emperor, Equal to the Apostles, was victorious over his enemies. Before a battle he saw in the sky the image of a cross with the inscription: “By this conquer.”
Saint Constantine sent his mother, the holy Empress Helen (commemorated 21 May), to Jerusalem to seek out the life-giving Cross of the Saviour. From an old Jew the Empress Helen learned that the Emperor Hadrian had built a pagan altar on the site of Golgotha and the Saviour’s Tomb; she ordered the heathen shrine to be torn down and the Lord’s Tomb to be sought out. Three crosses were found, and a board with the inscription made by Pilate, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews”; the nails were found too. To recognise the life-giving Cross, Patriarch Macarius touched a dead man with each of the three crosses in turn. At the touch of the Lord’s Cross the dead man came to life. Seeing this miracle, many Jews and pagans were converted to the law of Christ. This happened in 326.
