Byline: Thomas Craughwell

The sexual revolution of the 1960s dramatically altered the moral landscape of the Western world. But of course, sexual promiscuity was not invented in the 1960s; it has always been with us, although it may have been more rampant in some places and some periods of history than others.

St. Mary of Egypt was born into a family of Egyptian Christians. At age 12, she ran away from home and went to live in Alexandria, the most cosmopolitan, most sophisticated and in many ways one of the most corrupt cities in the Mediterranean world. She supported herself as a singer and dancer. At some point, we don’t know when, she lost her innocence.

Mary’s sexual appetite took over her personality. She cruised the streets of Alexandria, looking for partners. Her favorite diversion was to corrupt innocent young men. But many years later, as she told St. Zosimus — the monk who wrote down her autobiography — she never accepted money from the men she slept with, she never became a prostitute.

Once, while walking along the wharves at the harbor, she saw a group of men boarding a ship. She asked one of the sailors who the men were, and where were they going. He said they were all pilgrims, heading to Jerusalem to celebrate there the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. On impulse, Mary decided to go, too. By the time the ship reached the Holy Land, Mary had seduced every pilgrim and every member of the crew.

In Jerusalem she continued her usual routine of looking for new partners. On the holy day, a throng of pilgrims made their way through the narrow streets of Jerusalem to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Mary, out of curiosity, joined them. But when she reached the threshold of the church, some invisible force held her back. She could not enter. All at once the wickedness of her life overwhelmed her, and she began to cry.

Near the door was a carving of the Blessed Virgin. Turning to the sacred image, Mary prayed for the first time in years, “Help me,” she begged Our Lady, “for I have no other help.” With that, the power that had kept her from entering the church withdrew and Mary went in. She found a priest and made a full confession.

After the Mass and veneration of the Holy Cross, Mary left Jerusalem, crossed the Jordan River and headed out into the desert. There she became a hermit, living a life of prayer and penance for nearly 50 years.

Toward the end of her life she encountered the monk Zosimus, to whom she told her story. Then she begged him to return to her on Holy Thursday with the Blessed Sacrament — it had been decades since she had been able to receive holy Communion. Zosimus returned, as he had promised, but he found that Mary had died. He buried her, then went back to his monastery and began to make known the story of Mary of Egypt.

Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”

Husbands and wives whose marriages are coming apart or who have already gone through the pain of divorce have as their patron St. Helen (or Helena). After more than 20 years of marriage, Helen’s husband divorced her to make a politically advantageous match with a young woman who was a member of Rome’s imperial family.

St. Helen was born in the town of Drepanum in northern Turkey; her father and mother were innkeepers. It was while she was working at her parents’ inn that Helen met a Roman soldier named Constantius Chlorus, a man whose origins were as humble as Helen’s; Constantius’ father was a goatherd; his mother was the daughter of a slave who had been liberated by his master. Constantius was an ambitious man who saw in the military an opportunity to rise above his low birth status.

The couple married in 270. Two years later, they were in Serbia at Constantius’ new post in the town of Nish. There, on Feb. 27, 272, Helen gave birth to a son. They named the boy Constantine.

We have no documents to tell us what happened to the family between the year of Constantine’s birth and 288, the year Constantius was appointed governor of Dalmatia. At some point during that interval, Constantius had won the confidence of the co-emperors, Diocletian and Maximian. Imperial patronage meant that Constantius was poised for great things, and in 292, Maximian selected Constantius to administer the provinces of Gaul, Spain and Britain. As a sign of special favor, the emperor urged Constantius to divorce Helen and marry Flavia Maximiana Theodora, Maximian’s stepdaughter. To sweeten the offer, Maximian arranged for 20-year-old Constantine to finish his military training by fighting Rome’s enemies in Egypt.

These were heady days for Constantius and Constantine, but it must have been a wretched time for Helen. After 22 years of family life, she found herself discarded by her husband and deprived of the company of her son.

We do not know what happened to Helen after Constantius divorced her, with one exception: We know that at some point during those lonely years, Helen converted to Christianity. Then, after the death of Constantius in 306, Constantine and his mother were reunited, and Constantine’s army proclaimed him emperor. While he was on the march to Rome to defend his title against a rival, Constantine had a vision of a cross of light inscribed with the words, “In this sign, conquer.” Constantine ordered a new military standard — a cross surmounted by the Greek monogram Chi-Rho, the first two letters in the name Christ. Led by the cross, Constantine’s army went into battle at the Milvian Bridge outside Rome where he conquered his rival, as the vision had promised.

A year later, Constantine published the Edict of Milan, which put an end to the persecution of the Church and guaranteed toleration to Christians throughout the Roman Empire. To console his mother for all those unhappy years after her divorce, Constantine showered honors on Helen. He granted her the imperial title Augusta, renamed her birthplace Helenopolis and had coins struck bearing her image. In Rome, Constantine gave Helen as her residence the Sessorian Palace, part of which — including Helen’s private chapel — survives today as the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem.

St. Helen is also the patron of converts to the Catholic faith and of archaeologists. Her feast day is August 18.

Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”

Like St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1271-1336), her great-aunt, Elizabeth of Portugal, married young. At age 12 she became the bride of Portugal’s 20-year-old king, Dinis. It’s to be expected that Dinis would have no interest in a 12-year-old girl, and probably several years passed before the marriage was consummated (Elizabeth was 19 when she gave birth to her first child). In the meantime, Dinis was not lonely. He had a string of mistresses by whom he fathered at least seven, perhaps as many as nine, children.

Dinis was very fond of his illegitimate children; he brought them all to live in the palace and insisted that Elizabeth raise them along with their legitimate children. It is the kind of demand that could wreck a marriage, yet whatever Elizabeth may have felt — jealousy, resentment, rage — she kept to herself and proved to be a loving foster mother.

As callous as Dinis was to his wife, he compounded the problem by favoring one of his illegitimate sons over his eldest son and heir, Alfonso. Unlike his saintly mother, Prince Alfonso did not suppress his feelings of jealousy and resentment. Four times Alfonso schemed to overthrow his father and seize the crown; once he even contrived to murder his half-brother, the son Dinis loved best; each time it was Elizabeth who made peace in the family, although with each of Alfonso’s plots, it become increasingly difficult. Once, when Alfonso’s army was arrayed at one end of the field and King Dinis’ on the other, Elizabeth had to ride between them and refuse to leave the battlefield until father and son reconciled.

We do not know if Dinis ever asked Elizabeth to forgive him for all the pain he had caused her. After Dinis died, however, in his will he made Elizabeth executor of all he possessed. If he couldn’t respect Elizabeth while he lived, at least he showed her some token of it after his death.

St. Elizabeth is the patron of the University of Coimbra in Portugal, which she and her husband, King Dinis, founded when she was just 19 years old. Ratified in 1290, the university is one of the oldest continuously operating universities in the world. Papal confirmation was granted to the university by Pope Nicholas IV on Aug. 9, 1290.

St. Elizabeth is also the patron saint of brides and is invoked against jealousy. Her feast day is July 4.

Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”

St. Macrina was the grandmother of St. Basil the Great, his brothers St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Peter of Sebaste, and their sister, St. Macrina the Younger. Macrina raised all of her grandchildren (she had 10), and she took special care to give them a sound religious education. Her care paid off: Basil became a monk and wrote a monastic rule that is still followed by monks in the East. Gregory became bishop of Nyssa and then archbishop of Sebaste. Peter preceded his brother as archbishop of Sebaste. All three brothers were champions of the Catholic faith against Arianism, a heresy that was raging across the Christian world at the time. And Macrina the Younger became abbess of a small community of nuns near the Black Sea.

St. Macrina had been converted by St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (the name means “wonder-worker”), a renowned preacher. It was said that when he was made bishop of Caesarea, there were only 17 Christians in his diocese, but when he died there were only 17 pagans in his diocese he had not managed to convert.

In 303, Emperor Diocletian began his empire-wide persecution of Christians. It would be the last Roman persecution of the Church, and it would prove to be the most ferocious. Thousands of Christians were killed, among them some of the most revered martyrs of the early Church, including St. Agnes, St. Sebastian, Sts. Cosmas and Damian, and St. Januarius, known to Italians as San Gennaro. As was true of so many Christians, Macrina and her husband went into hiding. They fled to a remote spot in a vast forest along the shores of the Black Sea, where they remained for seven years. It was a terrible time for the couple. In addition to the constant fear that they would be discovered and dragged off to a horrible death, they often had difficulty foraging for food. Several times Macrina and her husband nearly starved to death.

Only in 311 did they feel safe enough to leave their refuge and return to civilization. Soon thereafter, Macrina’s husband died, and she filled her days raising and educating her grandchildren.

Her feast day is January 14.

St. Macrina the Elder is the matriarch of one of the Church’s most blessed families. Along with her son, St. Basil the Elder, and her daughter-in-law, St. Emmelia, four of her 10 grandchildren have been canonized as saints, including:

St. Basil the Great: Bishop of Caesarea and Doctor of the Church, St. Basil is known as a great defender of Christianity against Arianism. He was revered for his spiritual achievements and his many contributions to Christian culture in the fourth century. His feast day is Jan. 2.

The Crosiers

St. Gregory of Nyssa: Bishop of Sebaste and a prolific writer, St. Gregory is credited with being one of the most ardent orthodox leaders of his time due to his outspokenness against Arianism. His feast is March 9
 
 

Lapsed Catholics are not a modern phenomenon — the life of St. Monica teaches us that. Her son, Augustine, rejected the faith she had taught him as a child and joined the peculiar Manichean sect.

Monica (332-387) was born into a Christian family in the town of Thagaste, now Souk Ahras, in Algeria. Her husband, Patricius, appears to have been religiously indifferent, but he did not interfere with Monica’s faith and permitted her to raise their children as Catholics.

When Augustine was born, Monica did not have him baptized. During the first centuries of the Church, many Christians put off baptism until they were on their deathbed. Nonetheless, Monica did have her priest mark the infant Augustine with holy oil in the sign of the cross and sprinkle blessed salt, a sign of exorcism, on his tongue. This ceremony would have made him a catechumen, one who was taking instruction in the Faith, and Monica was Augustine’s teacher.

Monica and Patricius were ambitious for their son. They wanted Augustine to receive a classical education so he could enter one of the professions. Before Augustine went off to the university at Carthage — the Harvard of Roman North Africa — Monica pleaded with him to remain chaste. In his “Confessions,” Augustine admits he treated her “womanish advice” with contempt. He was, as he says, “in the mood to be seduced”; in fact, soon after he arrived in Carthage he found a mistress, and they moved in together. A year later, the woman (in none of his writings does Augustine ever mention her name) gave birth to a baby boy whom they named Adeodatus, meaning “gift from God.”

That news was bad enough. Augustine compounded it by abandoning the Catholic faith and joining the Manicheans, a sect that considered itself an intellectual and spiritual elite. Manicheans taught that there were two gods — one good, the other evil — who were in constant conflict for control of the universe. Throughout history many “Jesuses” had come to earth to struggle on the side of good, but none had ever triumphed over evil.

To have her son join such a sect broke Monica’s heart. She sought out a bishop who once had been a Manichean and begged him to go speak to Augustine. The bishop answered that so early in his conversion Augustine would not be willing to listen to any arguments against Manichaeism. But Monica would not take no for an answer. She pleaded and wept and made such a nuisance of herself that the bishop lost his temper. “Go away from me!” he cried. Instantly regretting his bad manners, he added, “Do not worry. It is not possible that the son of so many tears should be lost forever.”

Seventeen years passed before Augustine was ready to re-evaluate his life. By that point, he was teaching philosophy in Milan. Monica had moved there, too. In Milan, she found an ally in the city’s bishop, St. Ambrose. Augustine began attending any Mass where Ambrose was scheduled to preach. Between Monica’s prayers and Ambrose’s eloquence, Augustine renounced the Manicheans and entered the Catholic Church. On the night of April 24, 387, at the Mass of the Easter Vigil, St. Ambrose baptized Augustine and Adeodatus. The prediction an irritable African bishop had made to Monica so many years before had been fulfilled at last.

St. Monica is also the patron of homemakers, married women and victims of abuse by their spouses.

Her feast day is August 27.

Thomas Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”