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I hope to inspire you with meditative stories and contemplative reflections, help you gain a better understanding of your Catholic spirituality, and most importantly create an environment for you to encounter the combined hearts of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
I’m Walter Emerson Adams, a retired corporate executive who writes a phenomenology of Catholic devotion to St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. In a moment of unreflective certainty on a fall day in 2008, St. Joan of Arc entered my life story through the plays and poetry of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. The effect was immediate, astonishing, and life-altering.
I began asking myself what had happened to me. St. Thérèse brought me an instantaneous, awe-inspiring, holy love for St. Joan of Arc. I sensed the two had a relationship in Heaven, a union of hearts. Their “combined hearts,” filled me with Catholic hope that has persevered over the years. The impact on my life was so dramatic that I changed careers and lifestyle to search for the answer to the question, “What was it?” What brought about this transformation through St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse?
I was interested in “the experience of the experience.” Therefore, my question was not metaphysical. It was phenomenological. Metaphysically, I knew the answer was grace. Phenomenologically, the answer was hidden, a mystery beckoning me on a journey. My question began a fifteen-year journey on “The Trail of the Dogmatic Creed” with St. Joan and St. Thérèse to a mystical encounter with St. Mary Magdalene on the shores of France, with Jesus Christ, and with the Blessed Virgin Mary. What I have for you in The Dove and Rose is the phenomenology by which St. Joan and St. Thérèse guided me.
Reflecting for a decade on “the experience of the experience” with St. Joan and St. Thérèse, these saintly sisters led me on a psychic journey to the mystical Kingdom of Catholic and Royal France in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Under their guidance, my life transformed from near death to lively Catholic hope.
I share this journey in the hope that you, too, will receive a deep devotion to St. Joan and St. Thérèse, accompanied by a life-transforming dogmatic confession of the Catholic faith through their French, Royal, and Catholic spirituality. I hope this work will inspire you, help you understand more clearly your Catholic spirituality, and lead you to an encounter in the Holy Spirit with St. Joan and St. Thérèse.
“But you are a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people: that you may declare his virtues, who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9, Douay-Rheims)
To understand my work, it is important to read Walter Emerson Adams, the opening to this site.
My mission:
To help others be comforted, as though freed of a spiritual siege, by the divine virtue that resides in the combined hearts of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.1
These writings are personal reflections on my spiritual journey through the Catholic Church.
I hold an undergraduate degree in Economics from Princeton University and a master’s degree in Public and Private Management from Yale University.
I am married and the father of one child. Though raised a Methodist in the Bible Belt and surrounded with evangelicalism as a youth, I converted to the Catholic Church prior to my marriage in 1985.
Touched deeply by the life of St. Thérèse of Lisieux and imbued with a filial love for Mary, I set out on a life-long spiritual journey to "seek first" Christ's Kingdom with Thérèse as my guide.
Eventually led to confront my innermost being on that lonely, mystical hill of Calvary; I discovered through Mary's maternal guidance and Thérèse's sisterly care that Jesus had called another mighty saint to walk with me and to protect me through that dark and awful night of self-confrontation that leads us in Christ to true freedom. That saint, a spiritual sister to Thérèse, was Joan of Arc.
~ Walter Emerson Adams
Visit my home site at weadams.com.
Subscribe to my other Substack, The House of New Bethany.
Follow the Heroic Hearts podcast co-hosted with Amy Chase. Heroic Hearts is devoted to sharing the stories and spirituality of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse.
Pernoud and Clin, Joan of Arc - Her Story, 41. “But they (the citizens of Orléans) felt already comforted, as though freed of the siege by the divine virtue that they were told resided in that simple Maid…”
