“To think that Saint Joan was only nineteen years of age when she made the supreme sacrifice of submitting her life to the flames!
She was just sixteen, and with no prior military experience, when she rode forth in white armour to lead the army into triumphant battle at the Siege of Orleans. “By far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced,” Mark Twain said of her. In her are truly realised the words of the Psalmist, “On the lips of children and of babes you have found praise to foil your enemy.”
Of course, Saint Joan was no child: she was endowed with a courage and wisdom far beyond her years, which enabled her to foil the enemy with unparalleled success. In her was made incarnate the Wisdom of which Solomon sings so eloquently in our first reading today. It was indeed because of Saint Joan that God had “glory among the multitude”. “Though young, she was found keen in judgment.” “In the sight of rulers,” she was indeed “admired”. If not admired by King Henry of England or King Charles VI of France, she certainly impressed the Dauphin, to the point that he allowed her to proceed to Rheims in order that he might be crowned King Charles VII.
“The King of Heaven has commanded me,” she had told the Dauphin, “that through me you are to be consecrated and crowned in the city of Rheims. On behalf of my God, I tell you that you are the true heir of France and that he has sent me to take you to Rheims.” King Henry of England and King Charles VI of France, we might say, fall into the category of “monarchs afraid of me when they hear me.” Saint Joan anticipated the fear instilled by her voice when she wrote to the English at Orleans, “I will make a way-cry that will be remembered forever.” The pro-English clerics who put her on trial must surely have been impressed too by her courage in telling them, “You say that you are my judge. Take care what you do, for in truth I am sent by God, and you put yourself in great danger.”
Saint Joan gives eloquent testimony not only to the Wisdom of Solomon but to the very teaching of Jesus – the teaching we hear today, the call of Jesus for any follower of his to deny himself, take up his cross and follow. Every martyr knows what it means to take up their cross. So it is that many a martyr who has been heard to say, as they mount the scaffold or receive the noose around their neck, “Salve sancta crux”, “Hail, Holy Cross.” Such was Saint Joan’s conviction of the Cross’s saving power that she asked to have a cross held before her as she submitted to the flames. Hearing that, an Englishman made a little cross of wood, which he gave her and she devoutly received it and kissed it. She put this cross into her bosom and asked that she might have the processional cross from the church held before her eyes.
So the words of the Psalmist – “I keep the Lord before me always” – were realised in her. As she submitted her limbs to the chains and ropes which would bind her to the pyre, she was doubtless sustained by God’s promise, spoken also through the psalmist, of “the fullness of joy in your presence.”
Jesus showed her “the path of life”; and she took it. “Jesus,” she called continually as she became engulfed by the flames. Everyone heard her cry “Jesus”, as she took her final breath; and submitted her spirit into his loving embrace. He doubtless received her and told her, as he promised, “Well done, good and faithful servant; now come and enter into your eternal reward.”
The psalmist speaks of the way the Lord “even at night directs my heart”. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of Saint Joan’s prayer-life as one of continual conversation with God. That conversation must surely have intensified as she endured her long imprisonment. We can understand therefore how deep was her distress at the discovery that, if she persisted in her recantation, she would be denied the life of the sacraments for the rest of her life. She recanted only because she knew and trusted her judges to represent the Church; and because she respected and wished to submit to the Church’s authority, to the authority the Church invested in them.
It was when she returned to her cell and was reproached by her voices for having denied God that she chose rather to submit to a higher authority, to the authority of the voices she heard, even if it meant submission to the flames. From that point on, the psalmist’s prayer and conviction was made real manifest in her, that “I shall not be moved”. George Bernard Shaw, the English playwright, paid Saint Joan the highest compliment when he suggested, in such a decision, she “represent(ed) life possibly at its highest actual human evolution.”
Why King Charles VII would not support her after the failed assault on Paris is not clear. The historian Helen Castor believes the King did not wish to put his new reign in jeopardy. His recent coronation was secured. Paying a high ransom for the captured “Pucelle” could sabotage his war efforts.
Perhaps he was afraid that too close an identification with her now might cast a shadow over his reign. So he chose to leave the “Pucelle” to whatever fate God had in store or her.
One cannot doubt her trust that her Lord and Master would be waiting for her on the other side of the flames. It is rather wonderful to think that, as she stood at the Dauphin’s right hand to see him crowned in Rheims Cathedral, so now she sits at the Lord’s right hand, enjoying eternal happiness.
From there she has called down from God countless blessings on those who place their trust in her and in Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
By this I mean the countless miracles attributed and documented as being owed to her divine intercession; and confirmed as such by Pope Benedict XV in his canonisation of Saint Joan in 1920. They should serve as a sign and encouragement that she waits to intercede for every one of us if we would but ask her help.
As she commended herself, at the very last, to the intercession not only of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but also to the voices of those who had spoken to her – St Michael the Archangel, Saint Catherine and St Margaret – so should we on this, her feastday, commend ourselves not only to their intercession but to Saint Joan’s intercession. too. We should commend not only ourselves, our families, and the Church in France; we should commend the whole French nation and English nation, asking for her intercession these, our homelands, become places where the King of Heaven, in which she placed all her hope, might see his Kingdom grow.”
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