Synaxarium

The Church celebrates the appearance of the precious Cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: the first on the sixteenth day of the month of Thout in the year 326 AD by the righteous Saint Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine the Great. When her son Constantine accepted the faith in Christ, this saint vowed to go to Jerusalem. Her righteous son prepared everything to complete this holy visit. When she arrived in Jerusalem with a great army and inquired about the location of the Cross, no one informed her. So she took an elder Jew and pressured him with hunger and thirst until he was forced to guide her to the place where the Cross was likely to be, near Golgotha. She ordered the cleaning of Golgotha and found three crosses, in the year 326 AD. Since they did not know which was the Cross on which the Lord Jesus was crucified, they brought a dead person and placed one of the crosses on him, but he did not rise. They did the same with the second, but when they placed the third on him, he immediately rose. Thus, they confirmed that it was the Cross of the Lord Jesus. The queen and all the faithful people worshiped it, and she sent a part of it to her son Constantine along with the nails. She hastened to build the mentioned churches on the sixteenth day of the blessed month of Thout. The second celebration in which the Church commemorates the Cross is on the tenth day of the month of Baramhat. It was by the hand of Emperor Heraclius in the year 627 AD. When the Persians retreated defeated from Egypt to their lands before Heraclius, it happened that when they passed by Jerusalem, one of the Persian princes saw the Church of the Cross built by Queen Helena. He saw a bright light shining from a piece of wood placed on a place covered with gold. The prince reached out his hand to it, and fire came out and burned his fingers. The Christians informed him that this was the base of the Holy Cross, and they also told him the story of its discovery, and that only a Christian could touch it. He tricked two deacons who were guarding it and gave them a large reward to carry this piece and take it with him to his country. They took it, placed it in a box, and went with it to their country along with those they had taken captive from the people of Jerusalem. When Heraclius, King of the Romans, heard about this, he went with his army to the land of the Persians, fought them, defeated them, and killed many of them. He searched throughout that land for this piece but did not find it because the prince had dug a hole in his garden and ordered the two deacons to place the box in it and cover it, then killed them. One of his captives, the daughter of a priest, saw this by chance while looking from a window on the road. She hurried to King Heraclius and informed him of what she had seen. He went with bishops, priests, and soldiers to that place, dug, and found the box with its contents. They took out the holy piece in the year 628 AD, wrapped it in fine clothes, and Heraclius took it to the city of Constantinople and deposited it there. To our Lord be glory forever. Amen.

Do not pray the Supplicatory Prayers during the incense offering on the eve of the Feast of the Cross because it always falls during Great Lent.

The Nawas

In the winter months, the parts overlooking the Mediterranean Sea are exposed to the phenomenon of the formation of cyclonic low-pressure systems that characterize the climatic conditions in the Mediterranean region and are known in Alexandria as the Nawa.

The Nawa:

They are atmospheric disturbances that give rise to a circular or oval air vortex with low pressure in the center surrounded by a high-pressure area. Winds spiral inward toward the low-pressure center in a counterclockwise direction.