Gyut Khach: The Discovery of the Holy Cross

On October 25 this year, the Armenian Church marks Gyut Khach (Գյուտ Խաչ), the Discovery of the Holy Cross. It is the last of the four Armenian feasts of the cross, and in a sense the first, because it remembers how the cross came to be found at all.

The close of the season of the cross

The Armenian autumn holds a whole season of the cross. Khachverats comes in September, the Cross of Varak two weeks later, and Gyut Khach in late October, on the Sunday closest to October 26. Across two months, the same sign is carried through story after story.

The finding of the cross

By tradition, this feast remembers Queen Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine, who traveled to Jerusalem in the fourth century to find the cross on which Christ was crucified. The account tells of the True Cross being uncovered where it had lain buried, and recognized among others found with it. That finding is what gyut, discovery, names.

One cross, four feasts

Four feasts for one cross can seem like a great many. But each keeps a different moment. The cross appears in the sky over Jerusalem at the Apparition, in spring. It is found by Helena at this feast. It is kept safe on Mount Varak in a feast only Armenians hold. And it is recovered and raised up at Khachverats after the Persian years. Read together, they are one long act of holding on to a single sign.

The cross Armenians keep

Long after these events, the cross became the most Armenian of forms: the khachkar, carved in stone across a thousand years and repeated in the home ever since. It is the same sign in the Prayer & Faith collection, on the khachkar cross blankets and sacred-scene wall hangings, and it is why the close of the season of the cross is a natural time to let it be seen.

Keeping the day

Gyut Khach ends the season where it began: with a cross found. However you keep October 25, it is a good day to bring the sign home.