On September 14 the Church celebrates the Exaltation of the Holy Cross — the sign of salvation lifted up for veneration. The feast gathers three historical events into a single observance: the finding of the True Cross by St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, during her pilgrimage to Jerusalem around 326; the dedication of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre on Calvary, consecrated on September 13, 335, with the relic of the Cross first shown ("exalted") to the people the following day; and the recovery of the Cross by the Emperor Heraclius from the Persian king Chosroes II in 628, after the relic had been carried off from Jerusalem in the sack of 614.
Helena's excavations on Calvary, directed by Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem, recovered three crosses, and the True Cross was identified by the healing of a dying woman brought to the site. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre — built by Constantine over both the place of the Crucifixion and the empty tomb — became the first and greatest of the Cross's shrines. Pilgrims to Jerusalem still descend into the crypt of the Constantinian basilica, where the rock of Calvary can be touched beneath the Greek altar, and a silver disc marks the spot where the Cross is believed to have stood. The Pilgrim of Bordeaux, writing in 333, is the first to record that "by command of the Emperor Constantine a basilica, that is to say a church of wondrous beauty, has been built" on the site.
Tradition holds that Helena divided the relic — one portion remained in Jerusalem, one was sent to Rome and enshrined in the Sessorian Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, "Holy Cross in Jerusalem," and one was taken to Constantinople to make the city impregnable. The Roman portion is still venerated in Santa Croce, a short walk from the Lateran: fragments of the Cross, the Titulus (the title board Pilate placed on the Cross, recovered in 1492 and kept behind glass), and two thorns of the Crown. From the fifth century the relic fragments spread across the empire and beyond, and every church that holds a particle of the True Cross keeps September 14 as its own dedication feast.
The feast is also the title feast of the Congregation of Holy Cross, the religious order founded in 1837 by Father Basil Moreau at Le Mans, France. And it is a Marian date by proximity: in Malta September 8, the Nativity of Mary, doubles as Victory Day — and September 15, the day after the Exaltation, is the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, where the Church stands the Mother beside the Cross.
