Joan of Arc – celebrated after 601 years!

“Most beautiful Maid of Heaven, how brilliant is your light. Like a shining star you point the way to the Father of all light.”

St. Joan of Arc is the patroness of soldiers and of France.

Born circa January 6, 1412, Joan of Arc was born to pious parents of the French peasant class, at the obscure village of Domremy, near the province of Lorraine. At a very early age, she heard voices: those of St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret.

At first the messages were personal and general. Then at last came the crowning order.

In May, 1428, her voices of “St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret” told Joan to go to the King of France and help him reconquer his kingdom. For at that time the English king was after the throne of France, and the Duke of Burgundy, the chief rival of the French king, was siding with him and gobbling up evermore French territory.

After overcoming opposition from churchmen and courtiers, the seventeen year old girl was given a small army with which she raised the seige of Orleans on May 8, 1429. She then enjoyed a series of spectacular military successes, during which the King was able to enter Rheims and be crowned with her at his side.

In May 1430, as she was attempting to relieve Compiegne, she was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English when Charles and the French did nothing to save her. After months of imprisonment, she was tried at Rouen by a tribunal presided over by the infamous Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who hoped that the English would help him to become archbishop.

Through her unfamiliarity with the technicalities of theology, Joan was trapped into making a few damaging statements. When she refused to retract the assertion that it was the saints of God who had commanded her to do what she had done, she was condemned to death as a heretic, sorceress, and adulteress, and burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. She was nineteen years old. Some thirty years later, she was exonerated of all guilt and she was ultimately canonized in 1920, making official what the people had known for centuries. Her feast day is May 30.

Joan was canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.

A Tribute to Saint Joan of Arc on Her Birthday!‏

From a personal standpoint the greatest thing I can ever say about Saint Joan of Arc is that she leads me closer to God.

Last year, to celebrate the 600th Anniversary of her birthday I posted a paper I wrote titled Saint Joan of Arc: A Brilliantly Shining Light of God which explains why I believe that leading people to God was and is Joan’s greatest mission.

It is ultimately this that makes Joan so beautiful to me which is the beauty of a soul in Christ helping me to better know the great beauty of our Lord as David expressed in Psalm 27:

“One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord”

What has been so frustrating to me is how difficult it seems to be to share with others about Joan’s true nature and beauty. Last year after six years of almost continuous effort I came to a certain realization and added the quote below to the page of famous quotes testifying to Joan’s greatness located at MaidOfHeaven.com.

“I spent six years attempting to give people a proper understanding of the incredible beauty of St. Joan of Arc as I have been blessed by God to have been able to see in what at most has been a brief glimpse. I now realize it is an impossible task due to the severe limits of human expression. “

When I wrote these I words I realized that this was perhaps the greatest tribute that anyone could ever give to Joan to say that her beauty is simple beyond the ability of human expression to completely describe. So happy birthday to you Jehanne this year on the 601st Anniversary of your birthday and may you continue to be a brilliantlynshining light of God ever leading people closer to our great God Who created you.

“For all of this and all that you still are, I will love you forever and for all eternity.”

† Jesus Maria

Joan of Arc remaining letters ..

Ben D. Kennedy
E. [email protected]