Helena finds the Cross and Constantine spreads its veneration

At once he commanded the bishops to search for the longed-for wood. But all were at a loss about the place, and one told of one suspicion, another of another. The bishop of the city urged them all to keep quiet and to offer more earnest prayer to God about this. When this was done, the place was shown to the bishop from God at once: the place where the temple and the statue of the unclean demon had been set up.

Then the queen, using her imperial authority, gathered a great crowd of craftsmen and laborers and ordered the abominable building to be overturned from its foundations and the earth thrown far away. When this was done, the divine tomb appeared, and Golgotha, the place of the Skull, and not far off three crosses lying apart. Searching carefully, they also found the nails.

From then on, helplessness and distress seized the queen as she sought to know which one was the Master's cross. But the bishop resolved the question through faith. He brought each of the crosses to a woman who was ill, one of the prominent women, given up on by everyone and breathing her last. He found the one he was seeking: for only the shadow of the saving cross drew near the sick woman, and at once she who was breathless and motionless leaped up by divine power on the spot, crying out with a loud voice and glorifying God.

Queen Helena, crying out with a loud voice and glorifying God, took up the life-giving Cross with great joy and fear. One part of it, together with the nails, she sent up to her son. The rest she placed in a silver casket and handed it over to the bishop of the city, as a memorial for all generations. She also decreed that a church be built at the life-giving tomb, and at holy Golgotha, and in Bethlehem in the cave where our Lord Jesus Christ endured birth according to the flesh, and on the Mount of Olives, where the Lord blessed the disciples and was taken up. And after doing many other things in Jerusalem, she returned to her son.

He received her with joy. He placed the portion of the precious Cross that had been sent to him in a golden case and handed it over to the bishop for safekeeping, commanding that the exaltation of the precious Cross be celebrated with annual commemorations. Some of the nails he forged into his own helmet, and the others he mixed into the bridle of his horse, so that what the Lord said through the prophet might be fulfilled: "On that day, what is on the bridle of the horse shall be holy to the Lord Almighty" (Zechariah 14:20).

The emperor wrote to Bishop Macarius to hasten the building, and he sent a superintendent of the work with an abundance of money, instructing him that the holy places be built magnificently, so that there would be no such beauty in all the earth. He also wrote to the governors of the province to assist the work in every way from the public account, with money, expenses, and materials. The emperor was joyfully celebrating the feast of his twentieth anniversary, giving thanks to God for all the good things he had done in the years of his reign.

The years from the coming of Christ to the discovery of the Cross total three hundred fifty-two years. From Adam to the coming of Christ, five thousand five hundred years; according to others, five thousand four hundred seventy-five. In Jerusalem, Macarius, whose name means blessed, was succeeded by Maximonas. He was a gentle man and very distinguished. During the persecution he endured many tortures for God, and after losing his right eye he was released for his confession of the faith.

At that time the blessed Queen Helena reached the end of her life, being eighty years old, after giving many instructions to her son about piety toward Christ. Let the account of the discovery of the life-giving Cross end here. And let no one deceive himself by speaking empty and unprofitable words, or by introducing fictions with strange names into the subject.