You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for August 18th, 2020. Today is also the feast day of

St. Helena of Rome. St. Helena is the mother of Constantine, who is the emperor that ended the Christian

persecution. He also worked to protect the church, to build the church, and ultimately he made

Christianity the religion of Rome, which helped to spread it throughout the known world.

St. Helena is a really remarkable saint because she was divorced.

For most of her life, she was pagan.

And if you ever travel to Rome, you're going to see so many remarkable Christian artifacts in that city.

She brought most of them to Rome.

So here is Helena's story.

So Helena grew up poor.

She was a Roman citizen.

Her father owned an inn or a hotel.

And the story goes that a Roman officer was traveling by.

He saw her.

She thought she was so beautiful,

that he married her on the spot and carried her off to Rome. Together they had a son named Constantine.

However, her husband, he became more and more important in Rome. Eventually, the sitting emperor emperor decided that he, this husband of Helena,

that he would be the next emperor. Well, with that on the horizon, suddenly Helena wasn't good

enough to be the empress, so her husband divorced her, sent her away without a penny, and married someone

more important. So Helena went from being part of the highest level of Roman society to poor

and rejected. When she was at her lowest, she found friends that were very unlikely.

She found a group of Christians that took care of her, that spoke to her about Jesus Christ, and eventually won her heart.

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