Ss. Constantine & Helen

The emperor who ended the persecution and the mother who went looking for the places of the Gospel, kept together on one day as Equal-to-the-Apostles. Constantine saw the sign of the cross before the battle at the Milvian Bridge in 312, gave the Church its freedom the next year, called the bishops to Nicaea in 325, and founded Constantinople. He was baptised only on his deathbed in 337, by a bishop of Arian sympathies, and the Church has not pretended otherwise. Helena, in her seventies, travelled to the Holy Land around 326, where the Cross was found at Golgotha, and her son built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre over the place and churches at Bethlehem and on the Mount of Olives. The Exaltation of the Cross keeps what she found. Feast: May 21.