A holy expression of Jehannian-Thérèsian French Catholic Spirituality
St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux are to my own spirituality what wet is to water, or light is to the day.Walter Emerson The Divine Glance is both experiential and existential. We experience the existence of something, which we have defined previously as “meaning without understanding.” In this “something” is a seed… Continue reading Meaning as experience and living existence
“Will you follow where I lead?”Joan of Arc by Mark Twain The Divine Glance is constituted by both subjectivity and objectivity. This seed of subjective-objective chaos must be actualized through an ordering. This is not to say through order as in a final state but through ordering as a phenomenological process. Each step toward order… Continue reading The meaning of the meanings
In a single moment, a "divine glance," one day in October of 2008, Our Lord and Our Lady imbued my soul with a preeminent and life-long devotion to St. Joan of Arc. It was a thunderous instance of meaning that struck like a lightning bolt and with the same intensity that Joan displayed in her… Continue reading Meaning and Purpose
St. Thérèse unknowingly mastered phenomenology, which is the reason her simple childlike way is so compelling. She approaches us from the standpoint of experience and interpretive hermeneutics rather than academic deduction. The dry path of knowledge through rigorous analysis of medieval metaphysics, while necessary, does not readily connect with our lived experience. It confirms us… Continue reading St. Thérèse and Martin Heidegger
I would like to do a tribute to St. Thérèse of Lisieux on her birthday, January 2. I have been devoted to her for the past thirty-seven years. When I started attending classes for the Catholic Church, my epiphany confirming the truth of the Church's claims occurred on her Feast Day (new calendar), October 1,… Continue reading St. Thérèse – the greatest phenomenologist in the history of the Church
I continue to peruse the library of YouTube videos I have created over the years. This one has over eight thousand views. It is a poem of St. Thérèse about Joan of Arc. Thérèse is quoted as saying that the knowledge of Joan was one of the greatest graces of her life. She wrote what… Continue reading Joan of Arc – Forevermore to Dream, in the words of St. Thérèse
I was refreshing my YouTube page and thought I would post some of my more popular videos. This one has over 23k views. The last part shows actual photos of Joan's canonization in Rome. It took a while to get her canonized despite the universal recognition of her sanctity. The English were not keen on… Continue reading Joan of Arc’s execution and canonization
Here is another of my videos. This one with over 1200 views. If I could explain what we see here, I would. No one can; though, thousands have tried. The answers range from the superficial to the deeply thoughtful, but all remain insufficient. I recall the number of books written on Joan as being upwards… Continue reading Joan of Arc’s last hours before execution
Previously, I wrote on the clear, deeply insightful structure of St. Thérèse's intellect. St. Joan of Arc, the other half of the dynamic celestial duo, requires her own commentary. As opposed to Thérèse who wrote memoirs and letters in her own hand, we have no account of Joan's thoughts as expressed through her own writing.… Continue reading St. Joan of Arc’s Intellect
Amongst all the attention I bring on St. Joan of Arc, I too seldom make mention of the other half of the dynamic duo, St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Thérèse joined the Carmelite order at age 15 (younger than most). Her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, written under obedience to her superior, became a spiritual… Continue reading St. Thérèse’s Intellect
RoyaumeFrance.us 