“May they know the joy that Helen had when she found the precious cross….” (Wedding blessing)
The wedding sacrament is all but concluded—not quite, however. The crowns have been removed from their heads after appropriate blessings. Indeed, blessings in abundance have poured forth upon the couple from Christ and the Holy Spirit. Adam and Eve were recalled as the symbol of unity for two become one. The great patriarchs with their wives along with their descendants had been lifted up as examples of salvation through marriage and child rearing. Apostles, martyrs, and saints through the ages of sacred history were invoked as role models. After such a plethora of blessings, what could be left to add to those invocations?
What is it that connects every Orthodox wedding with this great feast which the Church celebrates each September fourteenth? The cross itself, of course. Every man and woman must know that they are to bear their crosses as husband and wife, father and mother, and not abandon the suffering that accompanies that sacred vocation. Along with the cross-bearing responsibility is St. Helen’s finding of the cross and the joy of her discovery.
At that special moment, as her servants were raising the Lord’s own cross at Calvary, what thoughts of joy were racing through Queen Helena’s mind? Was it the time when she had first accepted Christ and been baptized? Or upon reading the sacred gospels and grasping the importance of the holy city of Jerusalem to all believers? Could it have been when she realized what the cross means to all who receive Jesus Christ as their Lord God and Savior? Could it be of the time when her son Constantine won the battle of Milvian Bridge [312 A.D.], defeating his enemies and claiming the throne of the Roman Empire? Perhaps it was while she was explaining to her son what it was that came to him the evening before that decisive encounter—the meaning of the cross through which he saw the words: “In this conquer”? Maybe as she was gathering the Bible scholars, historians and geographical experts in preparation for the expedition to Palestine, called in that time Aelia Capitolina? It was an achievement of a plan so creative and audacious—to set out in search of the actual instrument of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ the Son of God and the Savior of all humanity, and to do so hundreds of years after the sublime event in a land void of Jews and Christians.
Or was it the joy of realizing that her plans had been rewarded, giving the comeuppance to all those cynics who argued that it was a foolish errand—that something that had happened three centuries ago could not possibly be reconstructed—and that she proved them all wrong? That her self-conceived pilgrimage trusting in the Lord Jesus to guide her to accomplish her objective had been achieved?
What does it mean to the couple who may be so inebriated with the radiance of the moment and of one another that they are hardly listening? That their ambitions, whatever they may be, and which are for their salvation will be accomplished as well, provided they do not forsake Christ of the cross.
The euphoria of the holy woman might have included the emotions of a parent who consummated her life’s ambition in fulfilling her heart’s desire made possible by a child who rose to the ultimate potential of any position on earth at the time—the stature of Caesar, the monarch of the Roman Empire.
It is a blessing bestowed on every newlywed couple in the Orthodox Christian Church, that the same power of the Holy Spirit which came upon Saint Helena at the greatest event of her joy be the same Spirit-filled experience they should realize in their new state of life together.