5/30/2015 – St Joan of Arc – Saturday of the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time – Sirach 51:12CD-20

      The Wisdom of Sircah today states in our first reading: “I thank the Lord and I praise him; I bless the name of the Lord. When I was young and innocent, I sought wisdom openly in my prayer.”   I can hear these words prayed by Joan of Arc, the saint we celebrate today.  I remember a friend of mine who was very well-read in literature once telling me that often times the lives of authors are as interesting or more interesting than the novels that they write.  The Frenchwoman Joan of Arc is one of those larger-than-life figures in the community of saints.  She lived a full century before the Protestant Reformation.  She was burned at the stack as a heretic.  Yet, she was named a saint in 1920, almost 500 years after her death.  It shows that sometimes a great deal of time has to pass before the Church officially recognizes someone as a saint, even though they have been long recognized as such in the hearts of the faithful for many generations.  Joan died at the age of 19 after being handed over to the English and having been tried and convicted by an ecclesiastical court.  She led the French forces to victory, yet the political attitudes and jealousies later turn those in power against her.  She is quoted as saying: “I would rather die than do something which I know to be a sin, or to be against God's will.” The many things under her patronage testify to her popularity even today in the modern world: men and women in the military, soldiers, the country of France, martyrs, prisoners, and those vilified and condemned for their faith. 

       I remember praying at the St Joan of Arc chapel on the campus of Marquette University when I was a seminary student in Milwaukee.  Legend has it that Joan kissed one of the stones in that chapel, and that the temperature of that stone is always colder than the older stones that make up that building.  That small chapel was dismantled from France and was reassembled in the United States, first at a grand estate on the East Coast, and later in downtown Milwaukee on the campus of Marquette. St Joan of Arc, please pray with us today!