St. Helen: motivated by true Christian zeal

By Bishop Peter Baldacchino -

Auxiliary Bishop Peter Baldacchino preached this homily during a Mass at St. Helen Church, Fort Lauderdale, at the celebration of the feast day of its namesake, St. Helen, Aug. 18, 2016. 

Thank you Father Lucien (Pierre) and parishioners of St. Helen’s, for your invitation to share this day with you and for your warm welcome ever since I arrived in Miami. Today you celebrate the feast of St. Helen, patronal saint of your parish here in Lauderdale Lakes.

St. Helen is often depicted holding a cross because tradition maintains she found the true cross in Jerusalem.

The Roman Emperor Hadrian, who reigned between the years 117-138 (reigning for 21 years), regarded Judaism and Christianity as insurrectionary. So, in order to eradicate the influence of Christianity, Hadrian leveled the top of Mount Calvary and erected a temple to the pagan goddess Venus. He also cut away and leveled the hillside where Jesus’ tomb stood and built a temple to the pagan god Jupiter Capitolinus. Ironically, this destruction actually preserved the sacred sites!

In the year 312, the Emperor Constantine seized power, and in the following year, he legalized Christianity with the Edict of Milan. It was about this time that Constantine’s mother, St. Helen, converted to Christianity when she was 63 years of age. Two years later, with the authority of her son the Emperor, St. Helen went to Palestine in search of the sacred sites. In the following years, St. Helen would build churches marking the place of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the site of the Ascension. She died 17 years later, in the year 330 (at about the age of 80).

St. Helen was motivated by true Christian zeal. She is said to have been “especially abundant (with) the gifts she bestowed on the naked and unprotected poor. To some she gave money, to others an ample supply of clothing; she liberated some from imprisonment, or from the bitter servitude of the mines; others she delivered from unjust oppression, and others again, she restored from exile.” Yet she maintained a personal piety toward God. She could be seen “continually frequenting His Church, while at the same time she adorned the houses of prayer with splendid offerings, not overlooking the churches of the smallest cities. In short, this admirable woman was to be seen, in simple and modest attire, mingling with the crowd of worshipers, and testifying her devotion to God by a uniform course of pious conduct" (The Life of Constantine, XLIV, XLV).

About the year 326 (14 years after the Emperor Constantine seized power in Jerusalem) the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus – that had been built on the hillside where Jesus' tomb stood – was demolished, and the workers began to excavate the area. They discovered the remains of the tomb that was reported to be that of our Lord Jesus. They built a new shrine over the tomb, which has been modified over the centuries, but today stands in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

With the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the Chapel of the Finding of the True Cross. Just east of the site, three crosses and the titulus (the wood plaque inscribed with Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum) were removed from a rock-cistern. A woman, dying from a terminal disease, was brought to the spot. She touched the crosses, one by one. After she touched the third cross, she was cured, thereby identifying the true cross.

On this parish feast day, we ask St. Helen to pray for us as we also remember the words of St. Francis of Assisi: "We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world."