Lives of the Saints
1. THE HOLY EMPEROR CONSTANTINE AND EMPRESS HELENA
The parents of Constantine were Emperor Constantius Chlorus and Empress Helena. Chlorus had other children by another wife, but by Helena he had only this Constantine. Constantine had three great battles when he became emperor: one against Maxentius, the tyrant in Rome; another against the Scythians on the Danube; and a third against the Byzantines. Before the battle with Maxentius, when Constantine was in great anxiety and doubt of his success, there appeared to him during the day a radiant cross in the sky, all adorned with stars, and on the cross was written: In this sign conquer. The emperor, amazed, ordered that a large cross be forged, similar to the one that had appeared to him, and that it be carried before the army. By the power of the Cross, he won a glorious victory over the numerically superior enemy. Maxentius drowned in the River Tiber. Immediately afterward Constantine issued the famous Edict of Milan in the year 313, that the persecutions of Christians should cease. Having defeated the Byzantines, he built a splendid capital city on the Bosporus, which from then on was called Constantinople. But before this Constantine fell into a severe illness of leprosy. The pagan priests and physicians advised him to bathe in the blood of slaughtered children as a cure. But he refused. Then the Apostles Peter and Paul appeared to him and told him to seek out Bishop Sylvester, who would heal him of his terrible disease. The bishop instructed him in the Christian faith and baptized him, and the leprosy disappeared from the emperor's body. When discord arose in the Church because of the treacherous heretic Arius, the emperor convened the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in the year 325, where the heresy was condemned and Orthodoxy was upheld. Saint Helena, the pious mother of the emperor, was greatly zealous for the faith of Christ. She visited Jerusalem and found the Precious Cross of the Lord, and built the Church of the Resurrection on Golgotha and many other churches throughout the Holy Land. In her eightieth year this holy woman departed to the Lord in the year 327. Emperor Constantine outlived his mother by ten years and reposed in his sixty-fifth year in the city of Nicomedia. His body was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople.
2. THE VENERABLE MARTYR PACHOMIUS
From Little Russia by birth. In his youth the Tatars captured him and sold him as a slave to a Turkish tanner. He spent twenty-seven years in slavery in the town of Usaki in Asia Minor. He was forcibly converted to Islam. He went to the Holy Mountain, was tonsured a monk, and spent twelve years at the Monastery of Saint Paul. He resolved to suffer for Christ. His spiritual elder Joseph accompanied him to Usaki, where Pachomius appeared before his former master as a Christian in monastic garb. The Turks subjected him to tortures, then cast him into prison, and finally beheaded him on May 8, 1730, on the very day of the Ascension. From his blood and relics many miracles occurred. He was buried on the island of Patmos in the Church of Saint John the Theologian. Thus this peasant from Little Russia became a martyr and crown-bearer in the kingdom of Christ.
3. THE VENERABLE HELEN OF DECANI
Helen was the sister of Stefan of Decani. She reposed in the mid-fourteenth century and was buried in the Monastery of Decani, where her relics are found to this day. Her portrait is preserved in the church in Gornji Matejevac near Nis.
Hymn of Praise
To Emperor Constantine the radiant Cross appeared,
Constantine beheld it and glorified God.
That sign was of the Son of God —
Than this sign there is none more beautiful,
A sign of suffering and temporal affliction
But also a sign of final victory.
With this sign, the worker of wonders,
Constantine goes forth and conquers everywhere.
In the midst of pagan Rome, the persecutor of the Cross,
He raises the Cross on high, the glory of the Savior.
What for three centuries was broken and cursed,
Now for Rome became great and holy!
For three hundred years the Cross was spat upon,
The earth was bathed in the blood of saints.
Kingdoms and emperors, proud and hateful,
Were broken in turn like feeble reeds.
But the sign of the Cross remained upright
And shone upon the world wondrously and gloriously.
Constantine recognized it and raised it higher —
Therefore his name is written in the calendar.
“For three hundred years the Cross was spat upon, the earth was bathed in the blood of saints. But the sign of the Cross remained upright.”
Reflection
That vice is something shameful and sinful we see also from the fact that it always hides and always assumes the mask of virtue. Saint John Chrysostom wonderfully says: "Vice has no face of its own, but borrows the face of virtue." Therefore the Savior said: They come in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves (Matt. 7:15). Call a liar a liar, a thief a thief, a murderer a murderer, a fornicator a fornicator, a slanderer a slanderer, and you will embitter them. But call any man you please: honest, honorable, unselfish, truthful, just, conscientious, and you will brighten and satisfy him. Again I say after Chrysostom: "Virtue is something natural in man, while vice is something unnatural and false." Even if a man is caught in a vice, he quickly justifies his vice by some virtue, clothing it in the garment of virtue. Truly: vice has no face of its own. Just like the devil, the father of vice!
“Vice has no face of its own, but borrows the face of virtue.”
Contemplation
Contemplate God the Holy Spirit as the inspirer of righteousness, peace, and joy, namely:
1. How He has inspired with righteousness, peace, and joy all lovers of the righteousness of Christ,
2. How He has inspired, and even today inspires, with righteousness, peace, and joy all who suffer for the righteousness of Christ.
Homily
on the Children of God
The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God (Rom. 8:16)
He who has within himself the Spirit of God — only he has the testimony that he is a child of God. Without the Spirit of God there is no such testimony. Nor can the entire universe give that testimony. The universe itself, without the Spirit of God, what else does it testify to us but that we are its slaves, its prey, which it mercilessly devours? The pagans, in fact, thought precisely this. The God-fighters of our day — do they not think the same? They do. For indeed it is difficult for a man who has not known the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God, the heavenly Witness, to escape that thought. Ye have not received the spirit of bondage, says the same Apostle. What is this spirit of bondage? Every spirit other than the Spirit of God, Whom Christ the Lord sends to those who love Him. The Spirit of God alone, the All-Holy Spirit, is the spirit of freedom and adoption.
O happiness, O peace, O joy, when the Spirit of God nestles in the purified heart of man like a swallow in its nest! Then hope opens a hundred gates in the prison of the universe, and our embrace, wider than the universe, reaches out to Someone greater and more merciful than the universe. To Whom? To the Father! And we then cry out: Abba, Father!
The testimony about God that comes through the eyes may even lead us to doubt that we are children of God. But the testimony that comes to us from the heart, from the Spirit of God, leaves not the slightest doubt. This is God testifying about God. What doubt can there be? And God the Holy Spirit caresses us in the very heart of our being. What doubt can there be? No; rather we then know and feel with complete certainty that God is the Father and we are the children of God. No one's servants, no one's slaves, but — the children of God.
O Lord God the Holy Spirit, take up Thy dwelling within us and abide with us as the Witness of the Trinity and the Kingdom, as the Witness of immortal Paradise. To Thee be glory and praise forever. Amen.
“The Spirit of God alone, the All-Holy Spirit, is the spirit of freedom and adoption.”