They Wanted to Erase the Cross of Christ Forever — Without Knowing It, They Protected It
For nearly three hundred years the Cross of Christ lay buried beneath a pagan temple, in Jerusalem. The very people who had hidden it to erase its memory unwittingly preserved the exact spot. And when it came back to light, those digging did not find one cross, but three — identical, with no name left on the wood.
In this video we retrace the story of the finding of the True Cross: the emperor Hadrian and Aelia Capitolina, the pilgrimage of Saint Helena and the excavations ordered by Constantine, the testimony of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, the three crosses and the healing, the birth of the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14, the theft of the relic by the Persians and its return under the emperor Heraclius. And finally the objection everyone knows — “you could build a ship from the fragments” — and the answer almost no one knows.
Throughout, we keep what is documented by history distinct from what comes to us through tradition, because the truth is not afraid of precision.
🙏 If today you want to entrust to Jesus the cross you are carrying, let us pray together. Write in the comments:
“Jesus, in your Cross I entrust my life. I trust in You.”
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CHAPTERS
0:00 – Three crosses, no name: the mystery
0:58 – The place they wanted to erase (Hadrian and Aelia Capitolina)
1:48 – Saint Helena and Constantine: the order to dig
2:50 – Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, the witness
3:29 – Three identical crosses: how they recognized Jesus’s
4:18 – Why the Cross gives life
4:58 – The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and September 14
5:52 – The theft of the Cross and Emperor Heraclius
7:20 – “You could build a ship from the fragments”: the proof
8:49 – The true miracle of the Cross
10:16 – Closing prayer
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Documented facts:
Eusebius of Caesarea, Life of Constantine, Book III — demolition of the pagan temple, discovery of the rock-cut tomb, construction of the basilica.
Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses and Letter to Constantius II (c. 348 AD) — the wood of the Cross and its fragments already spread throughout the Christian world.
Egeria, Itinerarium (c. 380 AD) — the veneration of the wood of the Cross in Jerusalem.
Byzantine chronicles (Chronicon Paschale; Theophanes the Confessor) — the Persian conquest of Jerusalem (614), Chosroes II, and the recovery of the relic by Heraclius (630).
Charles Rohault de Fleury, Mémoire sur les instruments de la Passion de N.-S. Jésus-Christ (1870) — the measurement of the known fragments of the True Cross.
Tradition:
The finding of the three crosses and the miraculous healing: Saint Ambrose, De obitu Theodosii (395); Rufinus of Aquileia, Historia Ecclesiastica (c. 402); Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret (5th century).
#TrueCross #ExaltationOfTheHolyCross #September14
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