Joan of Arc has long been a fascinating of mine. If you check, my first blog post was about the Saint who saved France. What is it about the Holy Maid that captivates us? She captures the imagination of Catholics, Protestants, and even Atheists like George Bernard Shaw who wrote a play about her and Mark Twain who wrote a book about her. How does this Dame (female Knight) from Domrémy deeply connect with so many people of varying backgrounds and even faiths? I believe the answer is suffering. Joan of Arc shares a tragic fate that The Knights Templar did, that Martin Luther did, and that even Jesus Christ did. All of them have in common mock trials, where they were imprisoned, and those trying them had the intent to destroy them. What makes Joan stand out is she was a woman. And not just any woman, a woman that had lead forces of Dauphin to victory and even gotten him crowned, who had saved France from becoming New Burgundy and New England. And most of all, she did this dressed as a man
Leonard Ravenhill once said, "the tragedy of today is that the Church is pursing happiness not holiness." We are seeing a pandemic of unholiness in the Church, as more sexual scandals break out and leadership covering it up. We keep asking why? Why are innocents being preyed upon. All the usual tropes are brought up, "wolves in sheeps clothing," (Matthew 7:15) and that Jesus said, "everything that is hidden will be exposed." (Luke 8:17). Those are true, but we are reaching a point in the Church were all credibility is getting lost and it maybe beyond saving. The Gospel and Jesus Christ our Lord will not pass away, but the church may and one of the cornerstone problems with the church in the West is an obsession with Happiness. In the Age of Reason, an ungodly fusion was made between Christianity and Humanism, an idea that one could satisfy both the Kingdom of Heaven and yourself, even though Jesus said, "deny yourself and pick up your cross." (