In restitutionem sanctae crucis

Improvisations on the reading of the decrees for the restoration of the precious wood. O Golgotha, leap for joy; all creation again honors you and calls you God-receiving; for the emperor, having arrived from Persia, displays the cross fixed in you. Applaud him with your ever-memorable words; but if the stones have no mouth, prepare new branches of palms for the meeting of the new victor. He has removed from you the plaything of error; for if he himself had not taken away the wood, the bold-tongued magi would have had laughter. But now, having learned by deed their power, they have understood, I think, how fire is inversely turned to ash by wood mysteriously kindled. Well done, O most mighty one, for your labors and struggles in the battle for peace. And how shall we bless you with flowing words, whom grace shows to be blessed? How did you take back the stolen wood, having put to sleep the serpent that stole it? You were shown a hero to God, having seized the golden fleece from the slain dragon. For you did not slay the beast with Median drugs, but by fixing it to the wood. Cease then, false Israelites, from your ancestral faithlessness. The cross has come, royally received with litanies, prayers, tears, vigils, with the lame made whole and speaking instruments, having joined a great trophy to the emperor, enemies both desiring and more fearing. For it did not wish to dwell with the barbarian, even if, punishing the sin, it was then a sojourner, having run into a foreign land.

But he returned and gathered his children from the formless and spurious sojourn, and is venerated and glorified all the more, as one who chastens and redeems yet more. O Paul, initiate of the ineffable words, it is no longer possible to call the cross folly to the nations; for it has been found effective and has appeared awe-inspiring, even more so to the nations. Now, O Emperor, you hold the authority of our mystic leadership, and every land and City and the whole world blesses the grace given to you with one accord. May the great Constantine hymn you thus; for another blessing you will not suffice. Appear again, Constantine, to Rome; applaud your child, how, having taken your substance in a confused state, he showed it preserved. It is fitting now that you, having left the upper city, join with us in this lower city in celebration; for you had a gloomy and oppressed spirit until you recognized the cross returning victorious, which you first found hidden in its own place, but your child, not only hidden but also arrived in Persian furnaces, brought back to its original places; and you have a child by divine providence; so that Constantine might again be found fortified by the life-giving wood. How amazed I am, how by opposite turns, before the emperors, a pious emperor carbonized the fire with the fiery wood, which Chosroes despised as mere wood, but found it a spear for his own heart. Who, winged by words or flying through, could assail such mystic strategy? And now you walk, spiritually purified, a laughing path, dancing with Angels. The cross in you appeared to your enemies as a new ark, and more than the ark.

For one side inflicted wounds on the barbarians only as far as their arrows reached, but the stretching of the wood sent forth living arrows against them. Parthians set Persians ablaze, and a Scythian slays a Slav and is slain in turn, and with their own bloodied murders they have great confusion in a single battle. But you are silent, bearing a crown and scepter like an umpire of wrestlers in their midst, having wrestled with many, now dissolving the contest. The contestants in the middle look to your nod from the oblique angle of the struggles. Where your nod goes, the struggle has its judgment. If you nod back, the power of victory nods back with it, and seeing your nod, he delights, playing with harmless swords, and you smile at the theater of barbarians, beholding those who were once persecutors now subjects. These good tidings having been announced to us at a welcome and victorious time, when the one who refashioned our substance approached the tyrants of the tombs and gave life to the corpse of Lazarus—for it was necessary, I think, that the resurrection of the dead should again be heralded by the cross—the whole City gathered into itself like sand, like a stream, like measureless waves making many bodily outpourings. For they had eagerness, like a doe in summer thirsting and throbbing, to reach quickly the moisture of your syllables, O most mighty one.