Saint Helena
Feast Day: August 18
The Church honors Helena as the woman who discovered the cross on which Jesus was crucified. But Helena did much more than that for the People of God. She gave them Constantine, a famous Roman emperor, and she also showed them how to follow Jesus.
Helena was born in about 250 AD in Bithynia—part of modern-day Turkey. She was the daughter of a pagan innkeeper there. When she grew up, Helena met the future emperor of Rome. They married and had a son, Constantine.
In 312, as Constantine prepared for battle, he saw in the sky a flaming cross. On the cross were the words, “In this sign thou shalt conquer.” Constantine put the cross on his banner and won the battle. The next year, he issued an order making Christianity a lawful religion.
In that same year, Helena became a Christian. She traveled to Palestine to find the cross her son had seen. Soon Helena found a buried cross that she believed to be the one on which Jesus died.
Next, Helena built a church on the Mount of Olives where Jesus prayed on the night before he died. Then she built another church in Bethlehem. During the final years of her life, she showed great kindness to soldiers, prisoners, and the poor.
Helena died in about 330, when she was about 80. Her son buried her in Constantinople, the capital of the Roman Empire. Constantine soon followed his mother’s example and became a Christian too.
Connecting to Faith First® Legacy Edition
Grade 4 chapter 7
Connecting to Faith First ®
Grade 4, chapter 7