The Sentinel of the Combined Hearts
My encounter with Joan unfolded through the poetic plays and writings of St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
Read the entire House of New Bethany series here.
On a brisk October day in 2008, Joan of Arc entered my life like a sudden flame. She appeared—not as a vision of sight, but as a presence of Being, a sentinel and herald who carried within her a language not of this world. The instant she appeared, a new paradigm opened before me. Her heavenly language was both gift and invitation—a call to gather her words as my own, to speak in the cadence of her divine companionship.
Our mystical friendship was formed through this gathering of language—a communion of meaning in the Logos, Jesus Christ, the Word who gathers all creation to Himself. Through years of this sacred gathering, Joan oriented my soul toward the Good, revealed through the Holy Catholic Church—the visible Kingdom of God on earth, the radiant threshold of salvation for humankind.
My encounter with Joan arose through the Jehannian plays and poetry of Thérèse of Lisieux. Around their Combined Hearts, a heavenly light shimmered—a gleaming phenomenon faintly visible through Thérèse’s words. Her writing carried Joan’s own fire, and in their union I beheld a prism of divine brilliance. Their light was not metaphorical but ontological—a becoming in Being, a luminous passage from the shadows of subjective selfhood into the aletheian gateway of the Kingdom of God.
As I advanced into that light, the clouds of the earthly world receded. Before me rose the contours of a new realm—the Mystical Kingdom of France, radiant at the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. For fifteen years I gave myself to this vision, gathering its language, learning to speak from within the rhythm of Joan and Thérèse’s hearts. Turning from self-will, I sought to live in the aletheian unfolding of their love until their physis—their divine becoming—took root in my own world.
I gave up everything to assist the Holy Spirit in bringing forth this pearl of great price—to help unfold on earth the Combined Hearts of Mystical France “as it is in Heaven.” In that offering, I hoped to be gathered within their hearts, to live within the Mystical Kingdom of Catholic and Royal France, the lily blooming in Our Lady’s heart.
My work began through descriptive writing. I described what I saw: the gift of Being in God, shining around, behind, and through the Combined Hearts. I rejoiced in this aletheian physis—the “becoming in truth,” the appearing of what truly is as the Kingdom rose on the horizon through their light. Joan led, Thérèse walked beside, and I followed, journaling each step of our ascent.
That first October, I wrote four short prose poems to express what had happened. Within them lay the seed of all that would unfold in the next fifteen years. Everything I now reveal flows from those first words—the rest is elaboration, the continued gathering of a symbolic language born from that encounter.
From those beginnings emerged a metaphor that would guide my journey: the Trail of the Dogmatic Creed—the path of union with Joan and Thérèse leading to the Kingdom. The Combined Hearts beckoned me forward, and I could not resist the light that shimmered around them—Truth, Beauty, and Goodness intertwined.
Walking that Trail in friendship with Joan and Thérèse became the enduring theme of my life.