‘In This Sign You Will Conquer’: Exaltation of the Cross
Today in both the Roman and Byzantine Catholic calendars is the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross of Christ.
This feast commemorates the finding of the True Cross upon which Jesus died by Emperor Constantine’s mother, St. Helena, and the dedication of the basilica built over Calvary and the tomb from which Jesus resurrected.
After a vision predicting his victory in the sign of the Cross (he was told “in this sign you will conquer”), Constantine used the cross as his army’s emblem and became ruler of the Roman Empire. He therefore legalized Christianity. Constantine’s Christian mother Helena then traveled to the Holy Land to uncover sites important in the life of Christ, and there discovered Calvary, the tomb of Christ, and three crosses. Jesus’s cross was verified after a sick (or dead—accounts vary) woman who touched it was immediately healed.
The current Church of the Holy Sepulcher or Church of the Resurrection, encompassing the remains of Mt. Calvary and Jesus’s tomb, stands on the site of Helena’s ancient basilica. I had the great blessing to visit there and see the sepulcher last year (in the photo below, I am at the spot on Calvary where Jesus was crucified).
This feast also commemorates the recovery by the Byzantines of the cross from the Persians, who had temporarily captured both the cross and Jerusalem in the early 600s.
When Constantine heard “in hoc signo vinces,” or “in this sign you will conquer,” he thought only of his material victory over his rival for imperial power. But that statement applies to each and every Christian. Jesus saved mankind through His Cross, and rose from the dead only after his Passion and Crucifixion. So too, we will attain Heaven and the resurrection of the body, and we will conquer the forces of evil, only if we take up our crosses and follow Jesus (Lk. 9:23). In the sign of the Cross, we will conquer.