September 27/14 – Exaltation of the Honest and Life-Giving Cross of the Lordtranslated

The pagan Roman emperors tried to completely destroy in humanity the memories of the sacred places where our Lord Jesus Christ suffered for people and rose again. Emperor Hadrian ordered that Golgotha ​​and the Holy Sepulcher be covered with earth and a temple of the pagan goddess Venus and a statue of Jupiter be erected on an artificial hill. Pagans gathered at this place and performed idol sacrifices. However, after 300 years, by the Providence of God, the great Christian shrines - the Holy Sepulcher and the Life-Giving Cross - were rediscovered by Christians and opened for worship.

This happened at St. Equal to the Apostles Emperor Constantine the Great (May 21), the first of the Roman emperors to stop the persecution of Christians. Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Constantine the Great (306 - 337), after his victory in 312 over Maxentius, the ruler of the Western part of the Roman Empire, and over Licinius, the ruler of its Eastern part, in 323 became the sole ruler of the vast Roman Empire. In 313, he issued the so-called Edict of Milan, according to which the Christian religion was legalized and the persecution of Christians in the Western half of the empire ceased.

The ruler Licinius, although he signed to please Constantine of Milan...