Angelus News | June 4, 2021 | Vol. 6 No. 11

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INSIDE THE PAGES KRIS MCGREGOR When holiness makes you a war hero We’ve heard the stories of St. Joan of Arc’s bravery. But do we realize where it came from? As far as lives of saints go, the one belonging to St. Joan of Arc tends to resemble a Hollywood script more than a contemplative journey. She was, after all, a peasant who won the trust of the highest levels of power, a teenager who led men twice her age into battle. In the words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the French saint, whose feast the Church celebrates May 30, was “representative of those ‘strong women’ who fearlessly bore the great light of the Gospel in the complex events of history.” “The liberation of her people was a work of human justice which Joan carried out in charity, for love of Jesus,” he said at a 2011 papal audience. “Her holiness is a beautiful example for lay people engaged in politics, especially in the most difficult situations. Faith is “St. Joan of Arc Imprisoned in Rouen,” 1819, by Pierre Henri Revoil. | METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART the light that guides every decision.” It is that holiness — and the deep interior life which made it possible — that is the subject of Sven Stolpe’s “The Maid of Orleans: The Life and Mysticism of Joan of Arc,” (Ignatius 30 • ANGELUS • June 4, 2021
Kris McGregor is the founder of DiscerningHearts.com, an online Catholic spirituality resource. Press, $18), which envisions St. Joan as a mystic, rather than simply a religious war hero. Vincent Ryan, Ph.D., assistant professor of history at Aquinas College in Nashville, who wrote the book’s foreword, shared his thoughts on the spiritual side of St. Joan that too often gets overlooked. Kris McGregor: This book goes right to the heart of St. Joan’s spiritual motivation. Vincent Ryan, Ph.D.: When you focus on St. Joan’s mystical spirituality and the mystical nature of how she endured suffering, it is like blinders are lifted from your eyes. You’re seeing something you’ve looked at all this time in a new perspective. McGregor: When Stolpe talks about her prayer life, and especially the flowering of her mysticism, he’s very tender. Ryan: Stolpe writes, “Joan’s real greatness is her willingness to die as shameful a death as the savior upon the cross. As a sacrifice for all the cowardly, the cold-hearted, and the arrogant, God must call upon the purest and bravest of souls to suffer innocently and to die.” Her imprisonment and her trial particularly get at her prayer life. It’s a theme throughout the book, but in her isolation and persecution, you really see Stolpe try to penetrate as much as he can into the spiritual side of St. Joan. That was her bedrock, how she embraced her suffering. McGregor: Her prayer life kept her rock steady. There’s a moment in the book where she is being approached by townspeople, and she’s becoming well known as the army campaigns. Even though the campaigns haven’t always been successful, people want to be around her. She’s warned in prayer, and I’m paraphrasing, “Be careful, don’t fall in love with the sound of your own voice.” Ryan: People gravitate to her, they’re drawn by her humble confidence. It might seem like a contradiction, but they are also attracted by her confidence in her mission, in the rightness of the cause, and that she’s doing God’s will. There’s no sense of haughtiness in her, just this humble confidence and determination. That, I think, makes her all the more attractive to those around her, and it inspires them, either on the battlefield or to stand strong once more against the English. McGregor: Talk to us about this time in France. Ryan: France is in a pretty desperate situation. The Hundred Years’ War had overrun many parts of the country. Most of the war was raids by mercenary groups and free companies that would trade sides between the English and the French, and they would ravage towns and villages and countrysides. It was a brutal war that greatly devastated France, and that very much impacted the average person and many of these villagers, like the village of Domrémy, where St. Joan grew up. It tells you how desperate the situation is, when you think about it, that this 17-year-old girl who’s illiterate, she’s a peasant, she’s not from an elite background, comes onto the scene and is able to present herself to the court as someone who God wants to help lead the French into battle, to regain their lands and have the Dauphin crowned. There A late 15th-century depiction of the siege of Orléans of 1429, from Les Vigiles de Charles VII by Martial d’Auvergne. | WIKIPEDIA was some skepticism about this. After her visit to the Dauphin’s court at Chinon, St. Joan undergoes a threeweek interview, where theologians and others are having discussions with her to try and get a handle on her spiritual claims, and see if they’re orthodox. And she passes that. And they’re willing to let a peasant teenage girl lead the army into battle. She’s not really making military decisions, but she’s still there as kind of a standard-bearer — motivating and June 4, 2021 • ANGELUS • 31
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Angelus News | June 4, 2021 | Vol. 6 No. 11

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