In 326, Queen Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to find the Lord's Life-Giving Cross. By that time, Golgotha, the site of Christ’s Crucifixion, had been turned into a rubbish dump as an affront to Christians, and the Holy Cross lay buried beneath a heap of refuse.
With the help of a Jewish man named Judas, they excavated and discovered three crosses.
To determine which of the three was the True Cross of Christ, the body of a deceased young man was placed upon each cross in turn. When his body was laid upon the True Cross, the young man was raised from the dead. Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem then elevated the Holy Cross for the faithful to venerate.
In 333, Emperor Constantine I the Great built the Church of the Holy Resurrection over the Holy Sepulchre, where the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord was preserved.