The Life
Helena Augusta — mother of the Emperor Constantine the Great, discoverer of the True Cross, and one of the most consequential pilgrims in the history of Christianity — was born around 248 AD, possibly in the Roman province of Bithynia in Asia Minor, though British tradition insists she was born in Colchester (Camulodunum), the daughter of a British king. The dispute about her origins has never been fully resolved. What is beyond dispute is that she rose from obscure beginnings — Eusebius of Caesarea, the great historian of the early Church, calls her the wife or concubine of the general Constantius Chlorus — to become Augusta, empress of the Roman world, and the first great Christian pilgrim to the Holy Land.
She was the mother of Constantine, the emperor who legalised Christianity with the Edict of Milan in 313 AD and transformed the Roman Empire into a Christian civilisation. Her own conversion to Christianity appears to have occurred in her late sixties, possibly influenced by her son, and she embraced it with the passionate energy of someone who had been waiting her whole life for this. She used her imperial resources for three purposes: the freeing of prisoners and exiles, the endowment of the poor, and the construction of churches in the Holy Land at the sites of Christ's life, death, and resurrection.
Her journey to Palestine, undertaken when she was in her late seventies, is the founding act of Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She came not as a tourist or a political observer but as a believer on her knees, looking for the places where God had walked. She found them. She supervised the construction of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Church of the Eleona on the Mount of Olives (where Jesus ascended), and most importantly, she directed excavations in Jerusalem at the site of the Crucifixion and Resurrection that would result in the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — still the greatest pilgrimage church in Christendom.
The tradition, elaborated by Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Rufinus, holds that during these excavations Helena discovered the True Cross — the actual cross on which Jesus was crucified — along with the crosses of the two thieves. The cross of Jesus was identified by a miracle: a gravely ill woman (or, in other versions, a dead man) was brought to touch each of the three crosses; only on touching the True Cross was she healed (or he revived). Helena brought portions of the cross back to Rome, where she deposited them in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme — which she built specifically to house the relics she brought back from Jerusalem, filling it with Palestinian soil so that Rome would contain a piece of the Holy Land. She died around 330 AD, shortly after returning from Palestine. Her son was at her bedside.
The Discovery of the True Cross
The excavations ordered by Helena beneath the Temple of Venus that Hadrian had built over the site of Golgotha revealed the tomb of the Resurrection and, nearby, three crosses. The question of which was the cross of Jesus was resolved by a test — the sick or dying woman was brought to each cross in turn — and on the third cross she was restored to health. Helena had found what no one had been looking for because no one had thought to look: the physical instrument of the world's salvation, buried under a pagan temple for three centuries. The event is attested by multiple independent early sources. Whether one accepts the tradition literally or theologically, its significance cannot be overstated: Helena's excavations produced the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which has been the most visited Christian site in the world ever since. The relics she brought back to Rome — housed in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, the church she built specifically for them — include fragments of the True Cross, nails, thorns from the crown, and a portion of the inscription (INRI) placed above the cross. They remain in the basilica to this day. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre — built to her instructions The church that Helena directed Constantine to build at the site of the Crucifixion, Burial, and Resurrection is the Anastasis — the Church of the Resurrection — known to the West as the Holy Sepulchre. It has been destroyed (by the Persian invasion of 614 and by the caliph al-Hakim in 1009) and rebuilt multiple times. The current church, substantially the structure created by the Crusaders in the twelfth century with later additions, encompasses both Golgotha (Calvary) and the tomb of the Resurrection within a single building. The stone of anointing on which Jesus's body was prepared for burial is just inside the entrance. The Aedicule — the small chapel built over the tomb — stands in the rotunda. To stand in the Holy Sepulchre is to stand in the building that Helena built for this purpose. She came before any of it existed and made it possible. She is the reason pilgrims can stand at the empty tomb. Every pilgrim to Jerusalem walks in her footsteps.
Walk in Their Footsteps
Pilgrimage sites connected to St Helena
Ask St Helena to Intercede
Bring these intentions to this saint in prayer:
Helena was in her late seventies when she went to Jerusalem. She had lived her life in the shadow of her son, set aside by him as a political inconvenience, restored by him when he became emperor. She could have rested. Instead, she went to Palestine — on her knees, on foot through the holy places — and changed the face of Christian pilgrimage forever. The greatest works of her life came after most people would have finished working. The cross she found had been buried for three centuries under a pagan temple. Nobody expected it to be found. She went looking anyway. The things buried deepest are sometimes exactly where we need to dig.
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
St Helena, pilgrim empress, finder of the True Cross — give me your instinct for the sacred beneath the surface, your willingness to dig in places where others have given up, your refusal to accept that what is lost cannot be found. I am looking for something. Help me look in the right place, with the right patience, and with your readiness to fall on my knees when I find it. Amen.