Welcome to our daily rosary meditation. Let's begin in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Let's call to mind all those we've promised to pray for.

Today we celebrate the feast of the Triumph of the Cross.

This Feast celebrates three things.

The discovery of the True Cross of Jesus by Queen Helena,

in Jerusalem in 326 AD and the recovery of the true cross of Jesus

by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in 630 AD after it had been stolen by the Persians in 614.

And finally, this feast celebrates the way we may triumph through our own crosses.

Now many people think Jesus was not a real historical person, and that Christianity is just a myth.

One of the reasons I love going to the Holy Land

is that the historical places connect us to the reality of Jesus.

St. Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 325 AD to find and

restore all the places connected with the life of Jesus. Now in God's Providence, the most important

places, the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem, Calvary where Jesus was crucified and died, and the empty tomb of the resurrection, these

were known by the local inhabitants for two reasons.

First, Christians had continuously venerated these places from the time of Jesus.

Second, the Roman Emperor Hadrian following the Jewish Barcoqba Rebellion in 132 AD,

in an effort to stop Christians from venerating these holy sites,

he placed a pagan temple over each one.

So without realizing it, the Emperor Hadrian perfectly preserved

our most important holy sites, Bethlehem, Calvary, and the Tomb of the Resurrection,

he kind of preserved them in concrete, actually marble, and that's why they were known to everyone.

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