Today is the feast day of Joan of Arc. She was a beautiful person, simple, devout and strong. She rose from utter obscurity to accomplish one of the most remarkable feats in human history.
Her life contains many, many lessons. One of them is that God truly cares about human affairs, he wants us to live according to justice and right, and he will send us help to do so.
Joan's entire mission was about fulfilling God's will for France and her people. Everything she did was in humble obedience to the will of God, communicated to her through visions of Sts. Michael, Catherine, and Margaret. She never wanted anything more than to return to her humble home, yet she obeyed God and set aside her own desires.
The price she paid for this devotion was appalling. After all her triumphs, she was betrayed by her own king whom she raised to the throne, persecuted by hard-hearted enemies and corrupt Churchmen, and eventually put to death in one of the most painful ways imaginable.
She is, in my humble opinion, an outstanding example of a brave and Christian warrior. Her purity and love of God inspired all that she did, whose nobility of character inspired deep love and devotion among the hardened soldiers who followed her. Her courage under persecution is a shining beacon of strength and virtue.
At her trial, Joan offered a statement that sums up her character, and could have been her battle cry: "I came from God. There is nothing more for me to do here! Send me back to God, from Whom I came!"
Joan's life is a reminder of something that should be clear to us from Sacred Scripture and history. God cares about how our society and government are behaving. He wants us to live according to his divine will, even in the policies and laws we enact. He hates injustice, particularly to the weak and poor.
Joan gave up her life -- both her quiet pastoral life with her family and her physical life through her martyrdom -- because God had a particular plan for her and her country. We would do well to be just as open to God's will to our country, and to be willing to be his messengers in our age. It's hard to imagine our world welcoming a new Joan of Arc any better than her world did. But we still have to try.
St. Joan of Arc, please pray for us and for our country!
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