According to Tradition, the Precious Cross came to be as follows:

After the destruction of the Sodom and Gomorrah, and the loss of Lot's wife, his daughters, fearing there would be few men left, got their father drunk and slept with him. When Lot came to his senses, he felt his conscience check him, and went to see his uncle and our Orthodox forefather Abraham to confess his sin to. Abraham then told him: "Great is your sin, my child. Take these three rods, plant them and water them daily with water brought from the Jordan river. When they sprout, it will be a sign that God has accepted your repentance and forgiven your sin".

For the next three years, Lot would travel daily to the Jordan River carrying water in order to water the planted rods; but the devil, by transforming at times into an old man and at other times into an old poor and destitute woman, would manage to drink his water on the way. After this trial and agony that lasted for three whole years, God condescended once and Lot managed to avoid this meeting with the devil, thus watering the planted rods. Immediately after they had been watered, the rods sprouted and were joined to form the tri-composite tree of pine, cedar and cypress. The area where this wood had been planted is situated inside the Temple of the Monastery of the Precious Cross near Jerusalem, and to this day is shown to the Orthodox pilgrims who visit the monastery.

When Solomon was preparing to raise the Temple in Jerusalem, he cut wood from this tree too in order to use it for the construction of the Temple. The workers would cut it in the proportions they desired, but whenever they would try to place it appropriately it would not fit: it would either be too long or too short. In the end, they threw it away, calling this wood "condemned". When the Judeans crucified Christ, they used this "condemned" wood to make the Cross of the Lord, and this "condemned" wood was then transformed through our Lord who was hung upon It into the Blessed Wood of the Precious Cross.

As Christians, we ought to honour and venerate the Precious Cross, for our Lord Jesus Christ shed His All-Holy blood on It for the salvation of the people and for this reason It received grace and power to disperse the cunning spirits and to destroy the devil's cunning schemes against us.

St. John Chrysostom reminds us: "The Cross is a staff, a weapon and a non-combatant tower for Christians".

"The Cross is the sign of the Christians and a dread of the demons".

Since apostolic times, true Christians would honour the sign and typos (type) of the Precious Cross as well as believe in its salvific and life-giving power. Apostle Paul suggests the Sign of the Precious Cross, it being power of God: "ο λόγος του Σταυρού τοις μεν απολλυμένοις μωρία εστι - τοις δε σωζομένοις ημίν δύναμις Θεού εστί".

Also: "The precious wood of the Precious Cross is honourable, for Christ offered upon It a sacrifice for us, and thus it is something that we are justified and right to venerate, It being sanctified through the touch of His Holy Body and Blood," says St. John the Damascene.

The Veneration of the Precious Cross has also been sanctioned through Canon 73 of the Sixth Oecumenical Synod "του ζωοποιού Σταυρού δείξαντος ημίν το Σωτήριον, πάσαν σπουδήν ημάς τιθέναι χρη, του την τιμήν αξίαν αποδιδόναι ... "Όθεν και νω και λόγω, και αισθήσει την προσκύνησιν αυτώ απονέμοντες".

During the time when Emperor Constantine had been preparing for a crucial battle against Maxentius (near Mulbia bridge in Rome) -- a battle that would determine the fate of the Empire -- one day, he saw in mid-afternoon the Precious Cross formed in the sky as a shining column. He also saw written in the sky the words "Constantine, by this win!" (in Hellenic) or "Κωνσταντίνε, εν τούτω νίκα". Of course he believed after bearing witness to this incredible miracle and with faith he made such a labarum bearing the Sign of the Cross and won the battle. A few years before his death, St. Constantine established Christianity as the official religion of the empire.

Later on, his mother St. Helen searched the Holy Lands trying to find Christ's Cross. This happened in 364 AD. Indeed, they found three crosses but they did not know which one was Christ's. The funeral of a widow was taking place nearby and they decided to touch each one of the crosses to her body. When Christ's Cross touched her body she was resurrected and everyone there understood that they were dealing with the life-giving cross of Christ. Then everyone rushed to prostrate themselves before It and the patriarch of Jerusalem Macarius, standing by the pulpit, raised It for everyone to see It and glorify the Lord.

This was the first triumphant celebration of the Universal Elevation (Exaltation) of the Precious (Venerable) Cross. 300 years later, Emperor Heraclius brought the Precious Cross back to the Holy Lands, as It had been stolen by Persians.

Eventually, the Cross was split in the middle and various parts of it have been kept since in various monasteries. Today, the largest piece of Holy Wood in the world is kept in the Holy Monastery of Koutloumousiou on Holy Mount Athos. Sometimes, it is brought to mainland Hellas for purposes of pilgrimage. Smaller pieces of Precious Wood can be found in many places all over the world, even in the USA, most notably though in the Holy Lands of course.

We also prostrate ourselves before the Cross today; not because we are idolaters, but because through the Cross "on which Christ was nailed upon" we venerate the same Lord who sanctified this wood, abolishing death and sin and turning these into life eternal. The veneration therefore does not happen for the substance which could be from wood, plastic, gold or our fingers; it is done for the sake of the sanctified symbol which our Lord gave to us and symbolises the defeat of the devil and of sin. At the same time, it truly sends the demons away when we invoke it in the name of the Holy Trinity, as even the Devil himself was forced to admit to former magician and future Saint of the Church Cyprian.

On this day (September 14) we also chant "When Moses inscribed across with his rod extended ..." to remind ourselves of the miracle that Moses did in Egypt, when the Israelites had crossed the Red Sea. By commanding the waters to move, Moses had performed two signs which symbolised the power of the Cross (first across -- vertically -- and then in width -- horizontally - thus making the Sign of the Cross). The Jewish Passover was a clear type of the Christian Passover, our Pascha (stemming from the Jewish word Pasha for Passover), the latter being the Passover from death and sin to Life Everlasting.

Another time, when the Israelites were in danger of being destroyed from the army of king Amalek, Moses raised his hands in supplication to God and his people got strong again. But he got tired and his hands fell down and then the enemy started winning again. Then his brothers Aaron and Or went to him and held his hands up again and -- what a miracle! -- the Israelites began to win again and finally crushed their enemy. Here is again the symbol of the Cross in the Old Testament and Moses the protypon of Christ.

Yet another time, when the poisonous snakes would bite Moses' ungrateful compatriots, a copper snake raised on a column in the sign of a cross would protect everyone who would look at it from the bites of the snakes. Christ Himself did the same parallelism (demons, sins, His Cross). Read also here and here.

FOOTNOTES

the sign = True Christians only have one sign, the Sign of the Cross. Those who have moved so far away from the faith that they end up replacing the Sign of the Cross with other symbols, become a laughing stock to the Devil and his legions, since the demons do not fear other symbols. They only fear and have to flee, as the Devil himself was forced to admit to former magician and later Saint of the Church Cyprian, by the Sign of the Cross when it is done in faith and reverence in the name of the Holy Trinity. (He does not of course leave if we have a cross in memory of the thief's cross who rejected Christ, as certain blasphemers do today, often putting on this cross as an ear-ring.) Some of these new symbols do have a Christian origin, having existed temporarily during times of persecution for practical purposes of recognition (e.g. in the catacombs we find the symbols of a fish, T, Lamb etc.) whereas others are of a non-Christian, political or even demonic (magical) origin (e.g. the trefoil, one-way sign etc.). Of course, the Orthodox Church accepts the use of the fish for instance, in some ornamental art or for private use (as a bookmark or something), but the important point to realise here is that the Sign of the Cross does not get replaced by any of these other symbols, even if these are of a Christian origin. The Orthodox Church thus essentially accepts one symbol, as the Bible also suggests (c.f. the other links on this site) whereas She rejects the blasphemous practice of using non-Christian symbols.

three rods = These three rods were the pieces of pine, cedar and cypress wood taken out of Paradise and brought to him during the well-known event of Abraham's Hospitality depicted in the OT. We should note that icons of this event do not depict the Holy Trinity, which is impossible, but what Abraham actually saw. The Three Angels represent a type of the Holy Trinity that he saw, which is what the iconographer draws. The Fathers of the Church write that it was the unincarnate Christ in the form of an Angel with two of His Angels from Heaven that appeared to Abraham. What is particularly striking about the conversation is that Abraham interplays his tenses referring to the Three Angels sometimes in the singular and sometimes in the plural giving us "evidence" (type) to the Triune nature of God.