Helena speaks to us on Twelfth Night (or Epiphany) in the Holy Land just before she discovers the True Cross, her Mission. Later in Waugh’s admirable novel, in its chapter entitled Epiphany, Helena eloquently makes a heartful and mature prayer for her spiritually lax or slothful son, Emperor Constantine. Moreover, Helena reminded her son: if he was still “determined to rule,” he must do it, “but not without Grace, Constantine.” (186-my accent added) And thus not without the Sacrament of Baptism! Think of the misery of a whole world possessed of Power without Grace.” ( Helena, page 186-my emphasis added. Instead of letting one victim bear the frightful curse they will take it all on themselves, each one of them. Not now, but presently, people forget their loyalty to their kings and emperors and take power for themselves. “Sometimes,” Helena continued, “I have a terrible dream of the future. “Now you are going to start nagging about baptism again.” (Chapter Nine- Recessional-page 183-my emphasis added.)Ĭonstantine, now as Emperor, was still not to be considered a Christian, but he nonetheless had a private, sincere, and deeply searching conversation one day with his Mother, Helena.

And that’s not pleasant at all, I can assure you. In fact I often feel that I am the only real human being in the whole of creation. in the inmost cell of the foetid termitary of power, Diocletian was comsumed by huge boredom and sickly turned towards his childhood’s home.” ( Helena-Chapter 5-page 100-my emphasis added.)Įvelyn Waugh’s Words of the Emperor Constantine with His Now Christian Mother, Helena: But, out of sight on the shores of the Propontis, …. The hunted, trapped, murdered priest is amongst us again, and the voice of Campion comes to us across us the centuries as though he were walking at our side.” (Page x of the two-fold Preface to the 1948 American Edition of Edmund Campion.)Įvelyn Waugh on Saint Helena and Her Gradual Development of Her Cultivation and Her Womanhood: “The work of empire prospered, frontiers were everywhere restored and extended, treasure accumulated. In fragments and whispers we get news of other saints in the prison camps of Eastern and South Eastern Europe, of cruelty and degradation more frightful than anything in Tudor England and of the same pure light shining in the darkness, uncomprehended. Waugh’s Saint Helena and Saint Edmund CampionĮvelyn Waugh on Saint Edmund Campion (1946, 1948): “It should be read as a simple, perfectly true story of heroism and holiness….The martyrdom of Father Pro in Mexico re-enacted Campion’s.

Power Without Grace in a Foetid Termitary of Power:

Edmund Campion by Evelyn Waugh