Bible Flares › Saints › Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Feast · September 14
September 14, 335
Celebrated each year on September 14, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross commemorates the public display and triumph of the wood on which the salvation of the world was accomplished. Originating with the 335 dedication of Constantine's Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre following Saint Helena's excavation of the True Cross, and deepened by Emperor Heraclius's recovery of the relic in 628, the feast invites the Church to boast in Christ's sacrificial love over sin, devil, and death.
The cross was designed by Roman imperial power to be an instrument of absolute terror, reserved for slaves and insurgents to maximize prolonged bodily torment and public shame. Yet Sacred Scripture reveals God's economy of salvation continually turning human instruments of curse into fonts of blessing. When the Israelites were afflicted by fiery serpents in the wilderness, God instructed Moses to fashion a bronze serpent and mount it on a pole so that anyone bitten who looked upon it was spared from death. The Church recognizes this event as a direct type of the redemption wrought on Golgotha.
Christ Himself invoked this prefigurement in His midnight dialogue with Nicodemus, declaring that as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. By His voluntary submission to crucifixion, Christ inverted the catastrophe of Eden: where humanity fell by taking the fruit from the forbidden tree of death, humanity was redeemed and restored by the holy fruit hanging upon the wood of the Cross.
Around the year 326, following the Council of Nicaea, the Dowager Empress Helena journeyed to Jerusalem on an imperial pilgrimage of penance and architectural restoration. Having ordered the demolition of a pagan temple dedicated to Venus that Emperor Hadrian had erected over Golgotha, workers excavated beneath the earth and uncovered the empty tomb of the Resurrection alongside three preserved wooden crosses and the separate titulus inscribed with Pontius Pilate's threefold charge. According to the early church historians Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen, Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem authenticated the True Cross by bringing a terminally ill woman to touch the wood, whereupon she was miraculously and instantly healed.
Constantine immediately commissioned a monumental complex consisting of the Anastasis, the rotunda over the empty tomb, and the Martyrium basilica over the rock of Calvary. On September 13 and 14 in the year 335, bishops arriving from the Council of Tyre dedicated the sanctuary. During these solemn rites, the precious wood was elevated high before the assembly of believers for public veneration, giving birth to the annual liturgical feast kept by the universal Church.
Three centuries after its discovery, the True Cross became embroiled in the geopolitical storms of the ancient world. In 614, the Sasanian Persian monarch Khosrow II sacked Jerusalem, massacring thousands of Christians, setting the sanctuaries ablaze, and carrying off the sacred relic of the Cross to his capital at Ctesiphon. The loss struck Christendom to its heart. Byzantine Emperor Heraclius launched a fifteen-year counter-campaign, bearing icons of Christ and rallying Christian forces in what was widely seen as an act of defense and pilgrimage.
Following total Persian defeat in 628, Heraclius recovered the holy wood and returned it to Jerusalem in solemn procession. Historical accounts record that when the emperor attempted to carry the relic through the city gates wearing his imperial mantle and crown, he found himself mysteriously halted, unable to take a step forward. Patriarch Zacharias of Jerusalem gently reminded the ruler that the King of Kings had entered this city in poverty, carrying that very beam upon torn shoulders while crowned with thorns. Moved to tears, Heraclius stripped off his imperial regalia, took off his shoes, and carried the Cross barefoot into the restored Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The Catholic Church celebrates the Exaltation of the Holy Cross not to romanticize suffering or glorify physical brutality, but to confess the victory of the love of God. The Roman Missal's Entrance Antiphon proclaims the heartbeat of the feast: 'We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection, through whom we are saved and delivered.' In Catholic dogma, the Cross is the unique altar where Christ, eternal High Priest and spotless Victim, offered the perfect sacrifice that reconciled fallen humanity to the Father.
By this mystery, the Cross ceases to be a sign of defeat and becomes the royal throne from which Christ reigns over the cosmos. Patristic tradition, championed by thinkers from Saint John Chrysostom to Saint Augustine, sees the Cross as the true Tree of Life planted in the middle of the Church, bearing the medicine of immortality. In the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist, the fruits of this royal wood are continuously distributed to the faithful, applying Christ's historic triumph to contemporary souls.
In the liturgical calendar, September 14 is celebrated with red vestments, marking both the precious Blood shed upon the wood and the fiery victory of the Spirit. The Preface of the Holy Cross rings out that salvation was decreed upon the wood of the Cross, 'so that whence death arose, life also might again spring forth, and that the foe who conquered on a tree might on a tree also be conquered.' The usual penitential atmosphere associated with the cross on Fridays gives way to triumphant joy and gratitude.
For the believer today, the feast asks for more than nominal sentiment; it demands a total realignment of values. To exalt the Cross is to refuse the worldly temptation to flee from pain, trial, or rejection, and instead to unite daily crosses to the sacrifice of the Savior. The feast urges Catholics to make the Sign of the Cross with reverence and intention, to enthrone the crucifix in homes and workplaces, and to embody the humble self-emptying of Christ in an era consumed by pride and self-assertion.
May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
O God, who willed that your Only Begotten Son should undergo the Cross to save the human race, grant, we pray, that we, who have known his mystery on earth, may merit the grace of his redemption in heaven.
The Cross is a trophy against demons, a sword against sin, a sword with which Christ pierced the serpent.
Abroad the regal banners fly, now shines the Cross's mystery: upon it Life did death endure, and yet by death did life procure.
Watch the short film in Bible Flares. Every saint of the day comes with a short film, the narration, and the verse that anchors the story.
Open in Bible Flares →