Commontide
Liturgical Color: Red
The 15th Sunday after Trinity
O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
The Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Red Letter Day
Holy Cross Day, kept on September 14, celebrates the Cross of Christ as the instrument of the world's redemption. Its origin is a building: the basilica complex Helena (Constantine’s pious mother) raised at Golgotha and the tomb, dedicated on September 13, 335. From the fifth century the wood of the Cross was shown to the people at Jerusalem on the day after that anniversary, and the feast has been kept ever since, East and West.
The feast's origins are tied to two historical events. First, the dedication of Constantine's Church of the Holy Sepulchre on September 13, 335, with the veneration of the Cross on September 14 — this is attested by Eusebius and early Jerusalem liturgical practice. Second, the tradition that Helena, Constantine's mother, discovered the True Cross during her pilgrimage to Jerusalem (c. 326-328).
The Helena legend does not appear in Eusebius — a significant silence, since Eusebius was both a contemporary and a court historian who described Helena's pilgrimage in his Life of Constantine. The discovery tradition first appears in Ambrose (De Obitu Theodosii, 395), Rufinus (Church History, c. 402), and subsequently in Socrates Scholasticus and Theodoret. The story of testing three crosses on a sick woman (or a corpse) to identify the True Cross appears in Rufinus and later sources but not in the earliest attestation.
A second layer of history was added in the seventh century: the Persians captured the Cross relic when they sacked Jerusalem in 614, and Emperor Heraclius recovered it after defeating the Persians in 627, ceremonially restoring it to Jerusalem on March 21, 630. This recovery reinforced the feast's significance in both East and West.
The Helena legend — that she discovered the True Cross buried beneath a pagan temple in Jerusalem, identifying it through a healing miracle — is the defining tradition of this feast. Its absence from Eusebius, who described Helena's pilgrimage in detail but mentioned no Cross discovery, is a significant gap. Ambrose (395) is the first to attest it; by the fifth century, it was universally accepted. The three-crosses-and-a-miracle-test element appears in Rufinus but not in Ambrose — suggesting accretion over time.
The veneration of the Cross on September 14 was a major Jerusalem liturgical event, described by later pilgrimage accounts. The cross relic was displayed for public veneration, and fragments were distributed across Christendom — Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 348) already notes that pieces of the Cross had spread throughout the world. The Heraclius recovery (630) added a triumphalist dimension: the Cross rescued from pagan captivity and restored to its rightful place.