St. Helena

Who they were

Helena rose from nothing, likely an innkeeper's daughter in Asia Minor, to be the partner of the rising general Constantius, and was discarded by him when a dynastic marriage served his career better. She spent years in the political wilderness watching another woman hold her place.

Her restoration came through her son. Constantine, on taking power, brought his mother to court, styled her Augusta, and put her face on the coinage. She became a Christian in her sixties and spent her last years doing something no empress had done, travelling the Holy Land as a pilgrim, funding churches on the sites of the Nativity and the Ascension, and, by the tradition that made her famous, recovering the True Cross in Jerusalem. That finding is fourth century tradition and is told here as such.

Why people turn to St. Helena

People in marriages that are failing or finished, especially the ones who did not choose it. The devotion of the divorced and the set aside to Helena is popular rather than formal, and it is named that way honestly here. She is also asked for by late converts, since her own faith began past sixty.

How to ask their intercession

Ask her plainly, without pretending the situation is simpler than it is. If your marriage is in trouble, your diocese has real help and Retrouvaille exists; her prayers and that help are not in competition. Helena's own arc is the consolation: the discarding was not the end of the story.