Dcn Susan Erickson

Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9: 62)

Dear Siblings in Christ,

Today is the feast day of St. Helena of Constantinople, and one thing we might glean from her life is this:  she didn’t look back.  According to tradition the mother of the Emperor Constantine started life as a “stable-maid,” but she went on to marry Constantine’s royal father Constantius. When he divorced her to marry someone whose social status was more in keeping with his ascent to the pinnacle of power—he would eventually become emperor—, Helena tended to her only son and maintained her Christian faith.  Eventually Constantine became emperor, and Helena was elevated once again and given the imperial title “Augusta imperatrix.”

Helena undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and is said to have ordered the destruction of a pagan temple built on the site of what is now the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. She is responsible not only for that holy site, but also for building or beautifying the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Church of Eleona on the Mount of Olives (near where the current Church of Pater Noster stands today). Helena is said to have discovered a number of sacred relics in the Holy Land, including fragments of the cross. Today she is regarded as the patron saint of archaeologists, as well as of divorced persons.

The ancient historian Eusebius says that Helena was already 80 when she returned from her pilgrimage! So Helena wasn’t looking back wistfully at her youth, her hometown, her prior marriage or even the comforts of her place in the emperor’s court.

In today’s Daily Office Gospel reading, Jesus delivers some hard truths to his disciples—as he often seems to. “‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’” When a would-be follower asks first to be allowed to go bury his father, Jesus tells him to “‘[l]et the dead bury their own dead.’” Don’t look back, keep moving forward towards God’s Kingdom, is Jesus’ message.

What is holding you back from turning your face towards God’s Kingdom—what ruminations, grudges, regrets, old and unfruitful habits? As a senior in my eighth decade, I find St. Helena’s pilgrimage an inspiration for keeping my “hand to the plow.” I pray that all of us at Saint Philip’s are given the grace to face forward and to ask how we can help along the Kingdom’s breaking through.

Yours in Christ,

—Dcn Susan