HELENA.

Constantine appointed his mother Helena as Augusta and gave her unlimited access to the imperial treasury in order to locate the relics of early Judeo-Christian times. And the church of the Nativity in Bethlehem of Judaea, was originally financed and built by Helena the mother of Emperor Constantine, who have both been deified as saints by the Universal church that was established in 325 AD.

According to the traditions of the Church of Constantine, Mary and her child [supposedly] rested in a cave, called the Milk Grotto (la Gruta de la Leche), near the place where today stands the Church of the Nativity (la Iglesia de la Natividad). There, (Or so it is said) their supposed Virgin Mary breastfed the child Jesus to keep it quiet, while the soldiers of Herod were slaughtering the innocent children in Bethlehem of Judaea. A drop of milk [supposedly] fell on a stone of the cave, and the stone was supposed to have magically turned white. During the early centuries, this white rock, diluted in water, took the appearance of milk and was used as a religious relic.

Both Christians and Muslims believe scrapings from the stones in the grotto boost the quantity of a mother’s milk and enhance fertility. Mothers usually mix it in their drinking water; would-be mothers place the MAGICAL rock under their mattress.

There is also an old tradition which originated from the universal church of Constantine that identifies this as the burial site of the young victims of Herod’s Slaughter of the Innocents. There is a chapel dedicated to them in the caves beneath the Church of St. Catherine. None of this can be historically or biblically supported.

According to the traditions handed down by their saint Helena, it was in 6 BC, in the first few days after the birth of the child that the wise men paid homage to the baby Jesus in the manger in Bethlehem of Judaea, and immediately after the wise men were supposed to have left, Herod’s men began killing all the male children in that district who were two-years and below, while Mary supposedly hid in the milk Grotto, after which, Joseph and Mary with the baby Jesus, are said by Helena to have fled from Bethlehem of Judaea into the land of Egypt, where, according to Helena, they must have remained for two years, until Herod died in 4 BC.

If any of the above is true, then that would mean that Mary could not have presented Jesus in the Temple in Jerusalem and performed the ceremony of purification according to the time prescribed by the law of Moses, until Jesus was over two-years old and after the death of Herod the great in 4 B.C. when they were supposed to have returned from Egypt.