The Lives of Married Saints

The Empress, St. Helen, was not of noble background, being the daughter of an innkeeper. Being fair, not only in appearance, but also in mind and in her rare beauty of soul, she conquered the heart of the well-known warrior, Constantius Chlorus, and became his lawful wife. God blessed their union with the birth of a son, Constantine (274).

The couple had lived happily together for eighteen years when their family life was cruelly shattered. The Emperor Diocletian appointed Constantius ruler of Gaul, Britain, and Spain (292) and demanded that he divorce Helen and marry his step-daughter, Theodora.

This great trial struck Helen when she was still a woman in her forties, full of life. She had to give up the man she loved to his new family. Apparently she never again in her life saw her husband.

Fourteen years passed in which Helen lived in obscurity and poverty. After her son Constantine ascended the throne and ended the persecution of Christians, he issued a decree raising his mother to the rank of Augusta (i.e. Empress).

But St. Helen was already dead to everything earthly. She was attracted neither by honour, nor by the imperial purple. Her heart was given to Christ alone and her thought turned to Palestine, where the Lord had preached the Gospel, had lived, suffered and risen from the dead.

On Golgotha stood a temple of Venus. But now, with the victory of Christianity over paganism, all those places which had been sanctified by the Saviour’s presence needed to be purified from pagan defilement.

The heart of Helen was inflamed with the desire to fulfil this sacred mission. She was frightened neither by the complexity of such a labour, nor by the long difficult journey by sea, nor by her advanced old age. She was already seventy-seven years old.

She arrived in Palestine in the year 326 and discovered the holy Cross of the Lord in a wondrous fashion. She brought back a part of it to Constantinople as a gift to her son.

In all she spent two years in Palestine, erecting many churches; at the Holy Sepulchre, in Bethlehem over the cave of the Nativity of Christ, on the Mount of Olives, at the site of the Ascension of our Lord, at the site of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God near Gethsemane, at the place of the appearance of the most holy Trinity to Abraham at the Oak of Mambre, and at Mount Sinai. In truth this woman was great, and great was the fire that blazed in her soul; the Church has justly named her Equal-to-the-Apostles.

She gave up her holy soul to the Lord just a year after returning from Palestine, in the year 327.

They were noble Cappadocians. Basil was a teacher of rhetoric, and the first instructor of that great Father of the Church, his son, St. Basil the Great. He was distinguished for his great virtue. According to St. Gregory the Theologian, he would have held the primacy in virtue, had not his son taken it from him. The elder Basil’s mother, Macrina, was a disciple of St. Gregory of Neocaesarea, the Wonderworker. Together with her husband, the pious and virtuous Macrina lived for three years in the forest during the persecution of Maximin. St. Emmelia’s father received martyrdom in the last persecutions. How could such a brilliant family fail to raise up dedicated souls to the service of the Church?

The marriage of Basil and Emmelia was a “union of souls and bodies,” according to St. Gregory the Theologian. God blessed their marriage, and they had many and good children: four sons and five daughters.

Three of the sons became bishops: Basil the Great of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Peter of Sebaste; and one monk, Naucratius. One of their daughters, Macrina, became a nun. St. Gregory of Nyssa, in a letter to the monk Olympius on the life of his sister Macrina, writes about his parents: “Our mother was very virtuous and desired to preserve her virginity and pass through life blameless; but as she was orphaned of her father and mother and was very beautiful, and the fame of her beauty incited many to marry her; and as, if she did not wed some man willingly, she was in danger of suffering some satanic thing and being carried off by one of those who were stung by her beauty, she therefore consented to take as husband the one who was most modest in his life, Basil, I say, our father, in order to have him as the guardian of her life and wisdom.…”

“Our father was virtuous and worthy of the good opinion of men.... Our mother ... was subject to three different authorities, since she had properties in three countries.... After our mother was finished with the cares of raising her children and the concerns of establishing them in life, and after the properties were distributed to her children, then the life of her daughter Macrina became a good counsel and example for her in the ascetic way of life. Therefore she left her old habits and arrived at the same measure of humility of wisdom as Macrina.”

She lived in the same way as the other nuns..... Our mother came to deep old age and departed to the Lord.... After blessing her other children, who were grieving. she spreadout her hands upon Macrina and Peter, who sat next to her, the one on her right hand and the other on her left, and said to God: ‘To Thee, O Lord, I dedicate both the first and the tenth part of the fruits of my womb; my first-fruits is this my firstborn daughter, and the tenth part is this my last son. To Thee is dedicated by the Law both the first and the tenth part (tithe) of all fruits and they are Thine own offerings and consecrations. Therefore, let Thy sanctification and Thy grace come upon both this my first-fruits, and this my tenth part.”

With her hands she indicated Macrina and Peter. And saying these things, she ended her prayer and her life together, after commanding her children to bury her body in the tomb of their father.

SOURCE : Married Saints of the Church by Monk Moses of the Holy Mountain