A Phenomenology of the French Royal Hearts of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux
It is a fairytale-like story of divine friendship brought-to-being.
The phenomenology of the Dove and Rose is an embrace of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is a fairytale-like story of divine friendship brought-to-being. This friendship is revealed in its eidetic universality as an expression of truth, beauty, and goodness through the Sacred Heart of Jesus among souls in a Kingdom. Phenomenology is a creative process that reveals these divinely infused friendships and brings-them-to-being in the soul in congruous participation with grace. The Dove and Rose is the phenomenological expression of a story we have never been told but which is coming-to-being in us. Like a novel, the journey with St. Joan and St. Thérèse toward the Kingdom of France in Our Lady’s heart brings forth the “appearance of the story appearing” unconcealed through wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. Through receiving, recording, interpreting, asserting, and articulating the story, we are transformed in the truth, beauty, and goodness of that emerging story-never-told being revealed in us. “It is quite obvious that He who hath founded the earth by wisdom and hath established the heavens by understanding could not show less perfection in governing His works than in creating them. (Prov 3:19)”[1]
Coming-to-understand as our ‘way of perfection’
The anthological and eclectic discourse in the Dove and Rose is an account of coming-to-understand the story in union with the French royal hearts of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. It is our ‘way of perfection’ efficaciously produced through the sacraments and the grace of contemplation. It is intuited and then projected into being through the phenomena of the life of St. Joan of Arc, Thérèsian Carmelite spirituality, the golden legend of St. Mary Magdalene in France, and the philosophical lens of St. Edith Stein. Its aim is Faith, Hope, and Love "on earth as it is in Heaven" through the majesty of Jehannian-Thérèsian French Catholic spirituality and True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is founding Magdalene’s Kingdom of Catholic and Royal France ‘on earth through wisdom and the heavens by understanding.’
The Dove and Rose began with a phenomenology of devotion to St. Joan of Arc through the Jehannian hermeneutics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. This developed into a devotional theory of the “combined hearts” of these two saintly sisters. The resulting phenomenological possibilities formed a more expansive totality of meaning based on the golden legend of St. Mary Magdalene in France. The urge to search for what remained hidden in this emerging map of meaning led to a more formal phenomenological methodology through the inspiration of St. Edith Stein.
The Dove and Rose model developed through three diachronic movements.
The first movement, developed from the years 2008 to 2010, is the descriptive devotional expression to the combined hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse.
The second movement, developed from 2010 to 2017, is the phenomenological expression of France in the City of God through the royal household of St. Mary Magdalene who lived out her last years in the grotto of Provence.
The third movement, developed from 2017 to 2021, is the phenomenological method under the luminous guidance of St. Edith Stein.
In summary, the initial phenomenon of the "divine glance" of St. Joan of Arc through the Jehannian hermeneutics of St. Thérèse resulted in an understanding of the emergence of "Catholic and Royal France" in the heart on earth as it is as a form in the center of Our Lady's Immaculate Heart in Heaven. Spiritual “France” through the heart of St. Joan phenomenologically revealed the metaphysical structure for the Dionysian stairway to Heaven (Stein, op.cit.). The royal House of Mary Magdalene’s New Bethany ascends by way of this stairway. This opens the fairytale-like ‘true’ story of Our Lady’s gift to us. “For if He assigns to His creatures the end that He wills, and chooses the means which seem good to Him to lead them to it, the end He assigns them must be good and wise, nor can He direct them towards their end other than by good and wise means”.[2]
Implications
This story is for those seeking a journey of phenomenological understanding to mystical Catholic and Royal France in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in union with the combined hearts of these saintly, celestial sisters. The Dove and Rose also can serve as a template for a more universal model of meaningful lived experience in the presence of God through the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
With Joan of Arc as my guide and "point of inquiry” to begin the journey, I passively and systematically followed the lighted pathway representing the movement of my living reality with her. Through grace her guiding principles harmonized into a Holy Expression - a gestalt construction - of unity of hearts with St. Joan and St. Thérèse in a spirit of French Catholic Holy Realism grounded in True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin.
The theoretical framework of this method is the French Catholic Carmelite mysticism of St. Thérèse and the philosophical influence of St. Edith Stein.
This phenomenon of meaningful, experiential union of hearts is not perceived through natural insight but through St. Joan and St. Thérèse who reveal it to us from Heaven. It is not a leap into imaginative ideas we create out of ourselves but a reception of supernatural union of hearts and minds through grace.
The Dove and Rose focuses on a transcendent phenomenological "presence" with St. Joan of Arc through the heart and Jehannian hermeneutics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. It is a relationship with the Combined Hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse leading along a line of meaning to a discovery of Holy Expression. Those who sense the call to these two "saintly sisters" through an "unreflective certainty" will benefit foremost. However, I believe that there are broad implications for the general Catholic devotional life. The interplay of grace with phenomenology ennobles our soul with a sense of mystical, contemplative meaning as we pursue "the appearance of something appearing" through St. Joan and St. Thérèse like an artist bringing the transcendent to life on a canvas. This pursuit is imbued with the Faith, Hope, and Love of our Catholicism and becomes our method of "spiritual artistry" through interpretive understanding. Perhaps its most profound significance is the demonstration of our Holy Catholic faith as far more than an abstract concept of dogmas and ideologies. Our faith is a life-changing lived experience imbued by sanctifying grace grounded in the sacraments and the real and substantial presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.
[1] Saint-Jure and de la Colombière, Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence - The Secret of Peace and Happiness, 4.
[2] Saint-Jure and de la Colombière, 4.