Судьба Креста Христова, его обретение и воздвижение

With the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross of the Lord, the Orthodox Church unites the reverent and grateful remembrance of the Cross itself, on which our Savior was crucified, and the joyful and sad recollection of the events of the discovery of the honorable and venerable tree of this Cross of the Lord. On this day, the Orthodox Church invites believers to render reverent veneration to the Honest and Life-Giving Cross, on which our Lord and Savior endured the greatest suffering for the sake of our salvation. On this Cross, in the words of church hymns, “death is mortified and now appears empty,” on it “the Eternal King brought salvation in the midst of the earth” and through him “eternal truth” was realized; for us, the Cross of Christ is a divine ladder, “from which we ascend to heaven”; This saving tree is “a weapon of the world, an invincible victory”, which “raises us to the first bliss, even before the enemy stole sweetness, created us expelled from God” and we are “deified on earth” and “all drawn to God.” How can we not thank the Lord on this holiday, paying veneration to the Cross of Christ, which appeared to us as the “incorruptible dawns” of our salvation, which opened for us access to the kingdom of God, to heavenly bliss, through which we received “immortal food”! In the words of one great Church Father, “The Cross is the head of our salvation; The cross is the cause of countless blessings. Through him we, who were formerly inglorious and rejected by God, are now accepted among the sons; through him we no longer remain in error, but have come to know the truth; through him we, who formerly worshiped trees and stones, now came to know the Savior of all; through him we, who were slaves of sin, were brought into the freedom of righteousness, through him the earth finally became heaven.” The cross is “the stronghold of the saints, the light of the whole universe. Just as in a house enveloped in darkness, someone, lighting a lamp and placing it on a raised platform, drives away the darkness, so Christ, in a universe enveloped in darkness, having raised the Cross, like some kind of lamp, and raising it high, dispelled all the darkness on earth. And just as a lamp contains light above at its top, so the Cross above at its top had the shining Sun of Truth” - our Savior 1. This is what the Cross of Christ is for us, and we must sacredly and reverently honor and honor it. Each of us sanctifies his entire life with the cross and the sign of the cross. From early childhood until death, every Christian wears a cross on himself, on his chest, as a sign of Christ’s victory and our protection and strength; We begin and end every task with the sign of the cross, doing everything for the glory of Christ. As such protection and protection, we inscribe the sign of the cross on everything dear and holy to us, and on our houses, and on the walls, and on the doors. We begin the day with the sign of the cross, and with the sign of the cross we fall into sleep and end the day. Now the cross is our greatest shrine, our glory, our spiritual all-conquering sword, and this is how Christ made it for us with his death and his suffering on the Cross. The Savior accepted the most painful of executions on the Cross, “he bore our sins in His body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24), “humbled Himself, and became obedient even to the point of death, the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8). What a truly amazing spectacle, beyond human understanding. “Behold,” the Church sings today, “the Lord of creation and the Lord of glory is nailed to the Cross and pierced in the ribs; The sweetness of the Church is tasted by gall and ocet; He who covers the sky with clouds is crowned with thorns and clothed with a robe of reproach; He who created man with his hand is strangled with a corruptible hand; He who covers the sky with clouds takes blows on the shoulders, accepts spitting and wounds, reproaches and blows, and endures everything for the sake of us, the condemned” (stichera). How can we, who have been blessed by the death of the cross and the suffering of the Savior, not bow in reverent awe before the “treasured tree on which Christ, the King and Lord, was crucified”, not sacredly honor the Cross - our glory, our victory in Christ and with Christ. Such a high and sacred significance of the Cross of the Lord, naturally, made the very tree of the Cross of the Lord, the very wooden cross on which the Savior was crucified, the greatest shrine in the eyes of Christians. But initially this Holy Cross was not preserved by Christians, was not the property of believers for three whole centuries, and the exact place where this Christian shrine was hidden was not even known. According to a rabbinic injunction, “a stone with which someone was killed, a tree with which someone was hanged, a sword with which someone was beheaded, and a rope with which someone was strangled should be buried with those executed.” 2 But, not to mention the fact that the Savior was put to death according to the laws of Roman execution, this requirement of the rabbinical law could not be fulfilled in relation to the Cross of Christ also because the most pure body of the Savior was buried by the hands of His disciples and friends. In any case, it is very likely that all three crosses (the Savior and the two thieves) were placed or buried near the site of the Savior’s crucifixion and death. The reverent memory of the direct witnesses and eyewitnesses of the crucifixion of the Savior - His loving disciples and disciples, of course, sacredly preserved this place with their veneration and worship. No subsequent circumstances in the life of the first Christians, no matter how difficult these circumstances were for them, could make them forget the places consecrated by the greatest events of the Savior’s life. Subsequently, the first Jerusalem bishops and subsequent Christians were the keepers of the memories of the holy places of death and burial of the Savior. Already St. Cyril of Jerusalem testifies that from the time of the apostles, journeys to Jerusalem began to worship places consecrated by the memories of various events in the earthly life of the Lord Jesus Christ 3 . The capture and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus 4 significantly changed many places in the city - the sacred places of the crucifixion and death of the Savior could also be changed, covered with garbage and ruins. In addition, the historian of the 4th century. Eusebius testifies that the enemies of Christians - the pagans - took measures to hide and even desecrate places holy to Christians; that wicked people with a deliberately insane goal completely changed the appearance of the area of ​​​​Golgotha ​​and the Holy Sepulchre. They filled the holy cave with rubbish, paved the mound on top with stone, and here they erected an altar to the goddess of voluptuous love 5 . Other historians 6 testify that the wicked Roman emperor Hadrian (117–138 AD) especially tried to desecrate all holy places with demonic idols and sacrifices. Having erected a city on the site of Jerusalem devastated by Titus, he ordered the Holy Sepulcher to be covered with earth and many stones, and on the mountain where the Savior was crucified (on the “Rock of the Cross”), he built a temple to the pagan goddess of debauchery Venus and placed her idol, and placed an idol of Jupiter over the Holy Sepulcher. But neither the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, nor its restoration by Hadrian could change the city and holy places so much that Christians who reverently remembered these places would not recognize them and could not find them. And the desires of the wicked and pagans to desecrate and hide these places achieved a completely opposite goal: with their mounds and idolatrous structures they firmly marked these places, making it impossible for them to be forgotten by believers and even the pagans themselves. Thus the Lord destroys the “councils of the wicked” and turns the very evil of mankind to the good of his Church! Reverently preserved in the memory of believers and firmly marked by the pagans, although desecrated by them, the holy place of the Lord's death remained intact until the time of King Constantine the Great. This Christ-loving emperor, while still outwardly a pagan, but in activity being a Christian sovereign, had reason to especially honor the Cross of Christ. This banner of Christ’s victory, according to Divine dispensation, served three times for Constantine the Great as a sign of his victory over his enemies. In 312, Constantine fought against the cruel Maxentius, who reigned in Rome, persecuted and killed Christians, and led an ungodly life. According to the historian of that time (Eusebius), Maxentius, in preparation for the fight against Constantine, resorted to various magic and superstitious rituals; Constantine, not entirely relying on the strength of his army, felt the need for supernatural help over the enemy, and therefore reflected on which God he should pray for this help. At this difficult moment, Constantine remembered that his father Constantius, who provided patronage to Christians, enjoyed prosperity, while the persecutors of Christians had a disastrous death - and therefore decided to turn with prayer to God Constantius, the one, supreme Being. And so, when he gave himself up to fervent prayer, around noon he saw a radiant cross in the sky, shining stronger than the sun’s light, with the inscription on it: “By this victory.” This miraculous sign was also seen by the soldiers, among whom was the commander Artemy, who was later martyred (under Julian the Apostate) for Christ. Struck by an extraordinary heavenly vision, Constantine fell into a deep sleep, and the Savior himself appeared to him in a dream, again showed him the same sign of the cross, commanded him to use the image of the cross as a banner in the troops, and promised him victory not only over Maxentius, but also over all enemies. Having woken up, Constantine ordered to make the Cross of the Lord, in the likeness of the sign he had seen, from precious stones, and also to inscribe the image of the cross on banners, on weapons, helmets and shields of soldiers. Since then, Constantine's troops carried out campaigns, having as their sign a cross connected to the first letters of the Savior's name. In the Battle of the Melvian Bridge (across the Tiber), Constantine won a brilliant victory over Maxentius (October 28, 812). Maxentius himself drowned with many of his soldiers in the river, and Constantine entered Rome victoriously. After this, he erected a statue of himself in Rome, holding a cross in his right hand, and in the inscription on the statue the victory over Maxentius was attributed to the “saving sign” of the cross. Also, in the war with the Byzantines and Scythians, Constantine saw the miraculous sign of the cross in the sky twice more, which announced to him victory over his enemies. It is easy to understand with what reverence for the Cross of the Lord the heart of the Christ-loving Tsar Constantine was filled after these events. And so this emperor, “not without inspiration from above, but prompted by the Spirit of the Savior himself,” decided not only to find the venerable tree of the Holy Cross and give it veneration, but also “to make the most sacred place of the saving resurrection in Jerusalem an object of universal reverent veneration” - to build a church over it 7 . The executor of the emperor's pious intention was his mother, the blessed Queen Helena, who, at the insistence of the emperor himself, converted to Christianity and was distinguished by her piety and fiery zeal for the faith of Christ. In 326, Elena went to the holy land with the goal of finding and visiting places consecrated by the most important events in the life of the Savior. Arriving in Jerusalem, filled with a pious desire to find the cave of the Holy Sepulcher and the honest wood of the Cross, she zealously began to look for them. The patriarch in Jerusalem at that time was Macarius, who met the queen with appropriate honors and assisted her in her holy work. According to legend 8, one Jew named Judas helped in the process of finding the Holy Cross of the Lord. Queen Helena asked the Jews living in Jerusalem to show her the place where the Cross of the Lord was hidden. They refused to do this, citing their ignorance, and only after the queen threatened with torture and death did they point to a certain elder Judah as being able to show the queen this place. But Judas did not agree for a long time to fulfill the queen’s demand and only after torture led her to the place where a large hill of earth, debris and stones had been built and where the Roman king Hadrian had once built a temple in honor of the pagan goddess Venus. When the idol church was destroyed, rubbish was scattered and the ground was dug up, the site of the Holy Sepulcher and resurrection, as well as the Place of Execution - the site of Christ's crucifixion - were discovered. A wonderful fragrance indicated these places to those who dug the earth and those present. Near the Place of Execution they found three crosses, nails and that tablet with an inscription in three languages, which was nailed over the head of the crucified Savior. However, now it lay separately from the crosses, and therefore there was no way to find out on which of the three crosses the Savior was crucified. Great was the joy of Queen Helena and the Patriarch when they saw the most sacred places and objects for a Christian. But to complete this joy, there was not enough knowledge of which of the three crosses to give reverent veneration as the Cross of our Savior. Then Patriarch Macarius proposed a test: one woman who was dying was brought to the place where the crosses were found; those present, with Macarius at their head, offered up prayers that the Cross of Christ would be indicated through the healing of this woman - and after this, first two crosses were applied to the sick woman without success, and at the touch of the third, the sick woman was healed 9 . In the fullness of reverent joy and spiritual tenderness, the queen and all those who were with her worshiped and kissed the Cross. And since, due to the multitude of people, not everyone could venerate the honorable tree of the Cross of the Lord and not even everyone could see it, Patriarch Macarius, standing in a high place, raised - erected the Holy Cross. The cross, showing it to the people. The people worshiped the Cross, exclaiming: “Lord, have mercy!” This is where the holiday of the Exaltation of the Honest and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord got its beginning and name. This event of finding the Holy Cross of the Lord and the miracles that accompanied it made a great impression not only on Christians, but also on Jews. Judas, who was so reluctant to point out the location of the holy places, together with many Jews believed in Christ and was baptized, receiving the name Cyriacus in holy baptism. Subsequently, he was the Patriarch of Jerusalem and suffered martyrdom under Emperor Julian the Apostate. Constantine himself subsequently wrote in a letter to Patriarch Macarius of Jerusalem about the discovery of the Holy Cross of the Lord: “there are no words for a worthy description of this miracle. The sign of the most holy passion, hidden underground for so long and remaining unknown for centuries, finally shone forth” 10. Holy Queen Helen, with the powerful assistance of her son Tsar Constantine, began to build churches in Jerusalem and throughout Palestine in places consecrated by events from the life of the Savior. And first of all, by the will of the queen and the king, the foundation was laid and construction began on the site of the Holy Sepulcher and the discovery of St. The Cross of the Church of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the consecration of which took place on September 13, 335. 11 Then the pious queen ordered the construction of a church in Gethsemane on the site where the tomb of the Most Holy Theotokos was located, in the name of Her Dormition and, in addition, eighteen churches in different places of the Holy Land. As for the fate of the newly found St. Helen of the venerable tree of the Holy Cross, then, unfortunately, it cannot be indicated accurately and quite definitely. This tree of the Cross of the Lord represented such a great shrine for Christians that the Christians, who already filled Jerusalem in large numbers even at the time of its discovery, were not only eager to venerate it, but, if possible, to receive a piece from it. Indeed, St. Cyril of Jerusalem (IV century) testifies that already in his time small parts of the Life-Giving Cross were distributed throughout the entire earth 12. And St. John Chrysostom (IV century) testifies that “many, both men and wives, having received a small particle of this tree and overlaid it with gold, hang it on their necks” 13 . But not all the wood of the cross was carried away from Jerusalem in this way. Queen Helena sent part of the found wood of the Cross and nails from it to her son Constantine, and the rest was enclosed in a silver ark and handed over to the Primate of the Jerusalem Church with the order to preserve it for future generations 14 . And St. Cyril of Jerusalem confirms that the venerable wood of the Holy Cross in his time was kept and shown to the people in Jerusalem. And in the description of the Good Friday service in Jerusalem, made by a certain noble pilgrim of the 4th century. (Sylvia, or Etheria), we find an interesting description of the very rite of worship of the tree of the Cross of the Lord, indicating the measures that were taken against the plunder of the holy tree by pious pilgrims. “On Golgotha,” this description says, “behind the Cross, i.e. behind the church in honor of St. The cross, even before six o'clock in the morning, the cathedra is delivered to the bishop. The bishop sits on this pulpit, a table covered with a scarf is placed in front of him, deacons stand around the table and a silver gilded ark is brought, in which is the holy tree of the Cross; opens and removes; both the tree of the Cross and the tablet (titulus) are placed on the table. So, when it is laid on the table, the bishop, sitting, holds the ends of the holy tree with his hands; the deacons who stand around guard. It is protected this way because there is a custom according to which all the people, approaching one by one, both the faithful and the catechumens, bend down to the table, kiss the holy tree and pass. And since, they say, I don’t know when, someone gnawed off and stole a piece of the holy tree, that’s why now the deacons standing around are guarding it so that none of the suitable ones dare to do the same. And so all the people come up one by one, all bowing and touching first with their foreheads, then with their eyes, the Cross and the tablet and, having kissed the Cross, they pass; no one extends his hand to touch” 15. The location of part of the tree of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem is confirmed by other historical data 16. In the 7th century During the reign of the Byzantine emperor Phocas (602–610), this great Christian shrine temporarily fell into the hands of the Persians. Khozroes, the king of Persia, having entered into a war with Phocas, conquered Egypt, Africa and Palestine, took Jerusalem, plundered its treasures, and among these treasures he took from Jerusalem the tree of the Life-giving Cross of the Lord and took it to Persia. But the Lord did not allow the infidels to possess the Christian shrine for a long time. Successor to Phocas imp. Heraclius could not defeat Khosroes for some time, and then he turned to God with a prayer for help. He ordered all the believers of his kingdom to perform prayers, services and fasts, so that the Lord would deliver from the enemy. The Lord granted Heraclius victory over Chozroes, who himself was killed by his son. After this, Heraclius took away from the Persians a valuable shrine of Christians - the venerable tree of the Cross of the Lord and decided to solemnly transfer it again to Jerusalem. In 628, Emperor Heraclius, having reached Jerusalem, placed St. tree on his shoulders, carried it, dressed in his royal clothes. But suddenly, at the gate by which they ascended to Lobnoye Mesto, he suddenly stopped and could not take another step. And then Zechariah, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who went out together with the inhabitants of Jerusalem to meet the king, had a revelation from the luminiferous angel that it was impossible for the tree that Christ carried in a state of humiliation to be carried in royal robes. Then the king put on simple and poor clothes and, with bare feet, brought the saint in. the tree was placed in the church in the place where it was located before it was captured by Khozroes. Here the venerable tree of the Cross of the Lord was located in subsequent times. At least at the beginning of the 9th century. Among the clergy of the Church of the Resurrection were two guardian presbyters, whose duties were to guard St. Cross and sir. Under the Crusaders, St. the tree was also, undoubtedly, located in Jerusalem and more than once served as encouragement and protection for their troops in battles with infidels 17. However, the further fate of the honorable tree of the Holy Cross is not exactly known. It is very likely that over time, gradually decreasing in volume, due to the pious desire of various monasteries and monasteries to have a piece of St. tree, it was completely fragmented into separate particles, which are now indicated in many churches and monasteries. In particular, in Rome, in the Basilica of the Holy Cross, a wooden tablet is kept, which is passed off as the tablet, titulus, which was nailed over the head of the Savior and was later found by St. Helen lying separately from the Cross. And now, on the day of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Honorable and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord, we Christians can only mentally render reverent veneration to the honorable tree of the Cross on which our Savior was crucified. But this Cross is indelibly inscribed on our grateful hearts, and its material image is in front of us in the church and on us - on our chests, in our homes. “Come, faithful ones, let us worship the life-giving tree, on which Christ, the King of Glory, willingly stretched out his hand, lifting us up to the first bliss!” (sticheron samogl.). "Creations of St. John Chrysostom", ed. Peter. spirit. acad., vol. II, pp. 435, 447. So does Prof. N. Makkavesky: “Archaeology of the history of the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ”, Kyiv, 1891, p. 291. N. Pereferkovich’s work is somewhat different in the same treatise to which Prof. also refers. Maccabees (Talmud, St. Petersburg, 1901, vol. 4, tractate Sanhedrin, p. 283): “The sword with which he (the criminal) was killed, the cloth with which he was strangled, the stone with which he was killed, and the tree on which he was hanged, all these things should be buried, but they were not buried with them (in the same grave).” Catechetical teachings, XVII, 16. Titus was a Roman emperor from 79 to 81. He conquered Jerusalem in 70 AD. under the former emperor Vespasian. Lives of Constantine, book. III, ch. 26. Blazh. Jerome (IV century). Letter to Peacock. Eusebius of Caesarea. About the life of Constantine, book. III, ch. 25. Recorded at St. Gregory of Tours. Various historians (Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodorit, Nicephorus Callistus, etc.) tell different stories about the miracle itself: many talk not about the healing of a sick woman, but about the resurrection through the laying of the Cross of the Lord on a dead person or woman who was carried not far from the place where the Cross of Christ was found. The most accepted narrative in the lives of the saints says that by the power of the Cross of the Lord a dead man carried past the location of the crosses was resurrected. For the story we have accepted, see Blessed. Theodoret (Ecclesiastical History I, 18), Socrates (I, 17) and Sozomyon (II, 1). Eusebius of Caesarea. About the life of Constantine, book. III, ch. 30. The consecration of this church is still celebrated throughout the entire Orthodox Church on September 13. Catechetical word IV, 10; XIII, 4. "Creations of St. John Chrysostom", vol. I, p. 632. The historians Theodoret, Socrates, and Sozomen testify to this. See prof. N. Makkavesky “Archaeology of the history of the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ”, Kyiv, 1891, p. 291. Orthodox Palestinian Collection. Maccabee N., called cit., p. 292–293. You might be interested in: