Tag: Helena

Posted on

Saint of the Day – August 18 – Saint Helen

St. Helen, also known as St. Helena (d. 327 A.D.), was a woman of humble means from Asia Minor. She married the future Roman Emperor Constantius Chlorus, and their son Constantine was born c. 272. Constantius divorced Helen in c. 293 to marry Emperor Maximian’s daughter for the sake of political gain. When her son Constantine became the Roman Emperor, St. Helen was given the imperial title “Augusta” and was treated like royalty. After Constantine legalized Christianity across the Roman Empire, St. Helen, a Christian convert, went to the Holy Land in search of the actual cross on which Christ was crucified, despite being in her 80s. She questioned local Christians and Jews and learned that the cross was buried under the Temple of Venus. Helen had the temple demolished and excavated. There she discovered the Holy Sepulcher, three crosses, the board with Pilate’s inscription, and the nails which pierced Jesus’ Sacred Body. In order to determine which cross was the Lord’s, the Bishop of Jerusalem touched them to a corpse, causing the man to come back to life. A second miraculous healing of a sick woman confirmed the discovery of the True Cross. Christians flocked to Jerusalem to venerate the Holy Cross. St. Helen then visited all the holy places of Jesus’ life and built many churches over their locations, including Bethlehem, the Mount of Olives, and the Garden of Gethsemane. St. Helen is the patron of divorced people, empresses, difficult marriages, converts, and archeologists. Her feast day is August 18th.

//Catholic Company//

Posted on

What happened to the True Cross?

How did the Church find the relics from Jesus’ crucifixion?

Have you ever wondered what happened to Jesus’ cross? Known as “the True Cross,” for hundreds of years this highly-venerated relic was thought to be lost.

Anti-Christian Romans sought to dispel any effort to spread the Good News; that included destroying objects from Jesus’s crucifixion. According to tradition, the True Cross was buried in the ground with the crosses of the two thieves who were crucified with Jesus.

Almost 300 years later, after the Roman Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, he sent his mother, St. Helena, to the Holy Land in search of the True Cross. According to legend, St. Helena followed in Jesus’ footsteps by performing corporal works of mercy—such as feeding the hungry and visiting the sick—on her way to Jerusalem. Once in the Holy Land, some legends say a commoner led her to the True Cross, while others believe that St. Judas Cyriacus helped her find it.

St. Helena found all three crosses buried in the ground, but wasn’t sure which one belonged to Jesus. There are many different legends about how St. Helena and the bishop of Jerusalem confirmed which one was the True Cross. One myth claims the bishop of Jerusalem had an ill woman touch all three crosses. As soon as the woman touched the True Cross, she was healed.

Upon discovering the True Cross, St. Helena ordered a church to be constructed on the site where she found it This church is known as the Church of the Resurrection, or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. St. Helena brought a piece of the True Cross back to the empire’s capital city, Constantinople, and left another part at the Church of the Resurrection, where Christians made a yearly pilgrimage to see the relic.

Throughout the next thousand years, the piece of the True Cross at the Church of the Resurrection changed hands many times. It was captured in 614 by the Sassanid emperor, and then restored to Jerusalem by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius. Later, when the Islamic rulers took Jerusalem at the beginning of the 11th century, Greek Orthodox Christians protected and hid the relic of the True Cross, a small piece of wood embedded in a gold cross.

This relic was restored to the Church of the Resurrection when Europeans in the First Crusade captured Jerusalem. Finally, in 1187, it was captured by Saladin, the leader of the Muslim military campaign against the Crusader states in Levant. This piece of the True Cross has never returned and was last seen in the city of Damascus.

The piece of the True Cross that was preserved in Constantinople was shared among the Venetians and the new Eastern Roman Empire. However, threatened with bankruptcy, this new empire decided to sell the relics. St. Louis, King of France, bought several pieces of the True Cross and preserved them in Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Most of these relics disappeared during the French Revolution. All that remain are a few fragments and a Holy Nail; these are preserved with the other relics in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris.

//The Catholic Company//