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Show CROSS HISTORY AND LEGEND , Seth's Request for His Father Receives a Branch From the Tree of Life-Plants Life-Plants It in the Father's Brain Grew Into a Gigantic Tree Its Subsequent iHstory Queen Saba's Prophesy Re- I garding It Served as Concrete Bottom Bot-tom for the Pool of Bethsaida Made Into Three Crosses for the Crucifixion Its Final iDscovery. (Foreign Correspondence Intermountaiu Catholic.) j (Copyright.) , - i In my last letter to The Intermountaiu Cath- olic, you will remember. I mentioned that amon; j the prehistoric relics found near the "Pyramids of j the Sun and Moon' were many small crosses know a , to American antiquarians as the "Swastica." It U ; today, for some unexplained reason, worn in gold, j silver and gun metal, by young ladies as a unique, " ! if not fashionable, ornament. Xo doubt the swastica swas-tica lias, mysteriously and quietly, taken possession posses-sion of the jewelry and curio shops of Salt Lake, and from these stores have, for a consideration, of course, passed to the hats and scarfs of ntflpy of your attractive and charming young ladies. intend in-tend to devote an article to the origin of the pecu liar svmbol. but first, and bv right of eminence. I must begin with the evolution of the Christian Cross, as recorded in the legendary annals of Spanish Span-ish Mexico. ! MEXICAX LEG EX D OF THE CROSS. It was recorded in .the last Gospel of Xichode-mus Xichode-mus a ruler of the Jews who visited Jesus in the j night that when Adam lay on his death-bed, hU , j son Seth approached the entrance of the Garden of ! Eden and asked jf the Angel with the flaming : sword for a little of the orl of the Tree of Mercy j that h might anoint the eyes of his dying father. j By the side of the Angel guarding the entrance to Paradise stood "a spirit of radiant beauty who, i moved by compassion for the sorrowing Seth. went to the tree and presented him with a small branch ! of the tree which was associated with Adam's fall. j "Tell your father," said the Angel to Seth, "that j when this branch grows to be a tree and bears one ? i precious fruit, he will be saved and enter into i heaven. SETH PLAXTS THE TREE. When Seth returned to his home, Adam had; j died and was buried. The son opened the grave, j ' and in the brain of Adam, planted the branch. Tha ; branch took root, and growing, became a large andj beautiful tree which was standing and fair to look upon in the time of King Solomon. I When Solomon was building the great Temple,, ! he thought of the splendid tree, and wishing tot - ' preserve its wood for all time, ordered it to be cut' j down and sawed into beams for the Holy Building.' The saws of the workmen made no impression on, the tree of Seth, and. worn out with repeated ef-; forts, the workmen stealthily carried it away byj , , J night, threw it across a stream, where it served for' a bridge. j When the Queen of Saba was on her way to i visit Solomon, she came to this brook, but when j she was about to step upon the tree-bridge, she j drew back, stopped and, moved by a feeling of ven- j erat ion. fell upon her knees and refused to put foot j upon the tree. Then when she was received by Sol- j onion, a phophetic spirit took possession of her and ! she told the King that the time would come when j One would be fastened to that tree whose death would announce the end of the empire of the ! Jews. : Solomon, astonished and alarmed by her prediction, predic-tion, ordered the tree to be removed and buried deep down in the earth. . " . Many years after the death of the King, when the history of the tree was forgotten, the Jews dug ! over the place where the tree was buried, the ground ' . for the sheep pond, known as the pool of Bethsaida or the Probatica. So that those who went down into : the pooband were cured of their diseases, after the Angel troubled the waters, reecived renewed health ' not alone from the waters, but by virtue of the won- j derful tree that was buried there. . j A fewklays before Judas betrayed our Saviour, the tree, breaking away from its bed of earth, came to J the surface of the water and floated in the pool. I j It was taken out and sold to a carpenter who wa3 I ordered, after the condemnation of ourvLord and I the two thieves, to make three crosses. On the 1 MIRACULOUS CROSS I Made out of this wonderful tree, our Saviour was I (Continued on Page 5.) j ' ! ! , - ' " CROSS HISTORY AND LEGEND. (Continued from Page 1.) j crucified. After the death of the Man-God, the cross -was buried with the instruments of the Crucifixion Cruci-fixion in conformity with the custom .of the Jews. The precious wood remained undisturbed and imde-cayed imde-cayed for three hundred years, until the time of Constantine, the Roman Emperor. We now reach the period when the legendary touches the boundaries of the historic and we are brought face to face with ecclesiastical narrative verified by church writers, the Roman breviary, and commemorative feasts of the Roman Ordo. Late in the afternoon of a hot summer's day, a mounted courier, grimed with the dust of the Cam- pagna and the Roman road, gallops into the imperial imper-ial city and announces to the captain of the imperial im-perial guard that a formidable and innumerable army of northern barbarians crossed the frontiers and were now encamped on Italian soil. When the Emperor was told of the invasion of the northern hosts, he began, at the head of his unconquercd warriors, his march towards the Danube.. When he came in touch with the enemy, he was amazed to learn of the strength and countless numbers num-bers of the barbarian hordes. If he lost the battle, he was to begin early next morning, his retreat would be a rout and Rome was doomed. Late at night, worn out from the fatigue of the day, he, entered the sanctuary of the Imperial tent and sought repose. While he slept, he dreamt that an angel came to his cot and. placing a hand upon his breast, told him to look up. Then, the canvas roof of the tent disappeared and the Emperor saw a large and luminous cross in the heavens, and immediately im-mediately over it in great letters of burnished gold. "Under this sign thou shalt conquer." Constantine summoned his officers to a consultation and related re-lated his dream. The pagan Emperor and his pagan pa-gan generals agreed that the dream was of happy omen, and that the voice of the angel was the friendship of a god. That night on the Imperial banner the cross was blazoned, and to the royal standard was given the name "Labarum" the ; Gift of God. Early next morning the battle i opened, and before the sun went down, the Romans were again masters of all Europe. On his return to Rome, the Emperor called his augurs and priests of the pagan temples to an Imperial Im-perial Council. He related the history of his dream, the incidents and happy issue of the battle, and demanded of them the name of the god who befriended him. They answered they did not know. Then there advanced to the Imperial seat an officer of the Council, a Christian, and after receiving permission to speak, declared that the cross, the sign, was the symbol of Jesus Christ, THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIANS. The Emperor made further inquiries, was instructed in-structed in the history of our Lord's life, the Crucifixion Cru-cifixion and the Resurrection. His conversion to Christianity followed and a new and brilliant era for the Church at once opened. Learning that it was the custom of the Jews, in the days of Herod and Auugstus, to bury the cross of the crucified, he requested his mother, then dwelling in his palace, pal-ace, to take with her an Imperial escort and retinue, sail for Jerusalem and find, if possible, the Cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. Unfortunately, history supplies us no authentic information on the birth or nationality of the Empress Helen. Her origin and place of birth, like those of St. Patrick, are themes for speculative writers, but has long ago passed outside the domain do-main of serious history. When the Empress entered Jerusalem, she at once called together an assembly of the officials of the city, learned from them the whereabouts of the hill of the Crucifixion the Golgotha, or place of skulls, and, as near as possible, the precise spot where the sacrifice took place. She was told that over the ground of the Crucifixion, on the hill of Golgotha, the Emperor Adricn had built a TEMPLE OF VENUS And that it would have to be removed before excavations exca-vations could begin. The temple was wrecked, the debris carted away, and the search for the Cross begun. Twenty feet below the surface, the diggers found three crosses. They were lifted from their beds, cleaned and brought to the Empress. Now which one of these three was the true cross? Not long after coming to the city of the Jews, Helen became the friend of one of the many ladies of noble birth who called to do her honor. This lady was for some time suffering from a serious illness, much to the sorrow of the Empress, and, at the time the crosses were brought to the Empress, a messenger mes-senger came to tell Helen, the doctors had abandoned aban-doned all hope and that her friend was dying. John Macairius was then bishop of Jerusalem, and when in obedience to ' the request of the Empress, he called to give his opinion on the crosses, she told him of the sickness unto death of her friend. "It is the Hand of God," answered the bishop. "I leave at once for the house of this dying lady. Send the ""crosses there now." . . "Here are three crosses." said the bishop to the dying woman; "place your hand on this one, and on this one, and now on this." When she touched the last of .the- crosses an instantaneous in-stantaneous change in her condition followed, thp ghastly pallor disappeared from her face, strength came back to her limbs, health to her body, and turning to the bishop, she said, "Thank God, I am cured. Tell the Empress." Helen now gave orders for the building of the Church fif the Holy Sepulchre, where the Cross, enshrined en-shrined in a silver reliquary. wasJto be venerated, and carrying with her as a gift for her son a portion por-tion of the holy wood, began her Romeward journey. jour-ney. These are historical facts, and to preserve for all time in the memory of her children these historical his-torical facts, the Catholic Church has named th third of May in her calendar as the day on which her priests and people are to remember and to celebrate cele-brate becomingly the festival of the "Finding uf the Cross of Jesus Christ." I understand that on that day. yearly, there is a particular mass, commemorative com-memorative of the event, celebrated by the priests throughout the world, and that all priests and bishops bish-ops are bound, under pain of sin. to recite on .that day the office commemorating the Finding of the Cross. Mexico City. |