A Cross of Light that Appeared Over Jerusalem and Remained Seen for Several Hours

 

What if today’s headline on major news outlets was: A Cross of Light Appears Over Jerusalem, Witnessed by Thousands. Hard to believe? It reminds me of the apparition of St. Mary in Zeitoun, Egypt beginning in 1968, seen by millions for more than a year. It is hard to deny something seen by so many, especially when the multitude of eyewitnesses span a diverse spectrum of religious and cultural backgrounds.   

Here is what St. Cyril of Jerusalem tells us happened:

St. Cyril was ordained a deacon by the bishop of Jerusalem, and then later ordained a priest at some time in the early 340s. A few years later, estimated to be around the year 348, he was entrusted with the responsibility to teach catechumens (Christian converts being given oral instruction [catechesis] in the faith, before baptism). Having been assigned to this important role, we see how well regarded he was among his peers, which was later affirmed when he was chosen to succeed Bishop Maximus in the See of Jerusalem around AD 350.  

In the first year of St. Cyril’s episcopate, during the reign of Emperor Constantius (the son of Emperor Constantine the Great), St. Cyril describes (in a letter to Constantius) a miracle seen by innumerable witnesses in the city of Jerusalem, of a cross of light in heaven for an extended amount of time. It is worthwhile to share portions of St. Cyril’s own account of this miracle of “the sign which appeared in the sky”: 

… In the time of your blessed father Constantine … the saving wood of the Cross was found in Jerusalem when God’s grace rewarded the piety of his noble search with the discovery of the hidden holy places….But you, … in your time miracles have now appeared … in the heavens: the trophy of the victory which our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, won over death—I refer to the blessed cross—has been seen flashing like lightning over Jerusalem.

In these holy days of the Easter season, on May 7, at about the third hour, a huge cross made of light appeared in the sky above holy Golgotha extending as far as the holy Mount of Olives. It was not revealed to one or two people alone, but it appeared unmistakably to everyone in the city. It was not as if one might conclude that one had suffered a momentary optical illusion; it was visible to the human eye above the earth for several hours. The flashes it emitted outshone the rays of the sun, which would have outshone and obscured it themselves if it had not presented the watchers with a more powerful illumination than the sun. It prompted the whole populate at once to run together into the holy church, overcome both with fear and joy at the divine vision. Young and old, men and women of ever age, even young girls confined to their rooms at home, natives and foreigners, Christians and pagans visiting from abroad, all together as if with a single voice raised a hymn of praise to God’s Only-begotten Son the wonder-worker. They had the evidence of their own senses that the holy faith of Christians is not based on the persuasive arguments of philosophy but on the revelation of the Spirit and power; it is not proclaimed by mere human beings but testified from heaven by God himself. Accordingly we citizens of Jerusalem who saw this extraordinary wonder with our own eyes, have paid due worship and thanksgiving to God… 

The miracle of the appearance of the cross of light above Golgotha is commemorated by the Coptic Church on the 12th of the Coptic month of Pashons (corresponding to May 20; this miracle is commemorated in the Byzantine rite on May 7th).   

The Coptic Church commemorates the departure of St. Cyril on the 22nd of the Coptic month of Paremhotep (which corresponds to March 31; in the Roman and Byzantine rites, he is commemorated on March 18).

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