This is the movement of the Holy Family.

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

Amen.

Let's call to mind all those who've promised to pray for, especially for Olivia as we approach her surgery, September 20th, for the healing of Damien, thatgo will wake up, and for all of those we've promised

to pray for.

Now, today we celebrate the feast of the triumph of the cross.

And this feast celebrates three things.

The discovery of the true cross of Jesus by Queen Helena in 326 AD.

And then the recovery of the cross of Jesus after it had been stolen.

And finally, the way we may triumph through our own crosses. Now, it's easy to fall into the false idea that Jesus was not a real historical person and that Christianity

is a myth. But one of the reasons I love going to the Holy Land is that the historical places connect us to the reality of Jesus.

As does this feast day. St. Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 325. To find and restore all the places connected with the life of Jesus.

In God's Providence, the most important places, such as the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem, Calvary, where he died for our sins,

and the tomb of the resurrection were known by the local people for two reasons.

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

Second, the Roman Emperor Hadrian, following the Bar Kokber Reara rebellion in 132, in an attempt to suppress Christian

pilgrimage to these sites, placed a pagan temple to Venus on top of Calvary, a temple to Jupiter

over the empty tomb of Jesus

and a place of worship to Adonis at the birthplace in Bethlehem.

Without realizing what he was doing, the emperor had perfectly preserved our most important holy sites,

and that's why they were known to everyone.

When Queen Helena arrived,

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