Divine Friendship through St. Mary Magdalene, St. Joan of Arc, and St. Thérèse
Friendship between souls requires a journey whereby the “harmony of their hearts” is fine-tuned for the heavenly choir.
“Wisdom is the refulgence of eternal light, the spotless mirror of the power of God, the image of his goodness. And she, who is one, can do all things, and renews everything while herself perduring; And passing into holy souls from age to age, she produces friends of God and prophets.” ~ Wisdom 7: 26-27
The phenomenology of the Dove and Rose is a Jehannian-Thérèsian-inspired profession of faith. It is a journey in friendship with Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the angels, and the saints. It is a story emerging through our interpretation of St. Joan of Arc's point of view and map of meaning. It is a story of how St. Mary Magdalene, on the shores of Provence, established a heavenly royal line for France as a form in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Through her contemplative life on the shores of modern-day France, Mary Magdalene established a royal diaspora through time and space devoted to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and to the form of France as a Magdalene lily of the Virgin Mary's heart. Through phenomenological comprehension, St. Joan of Arc guides us in divine friendship to our homeland in this heavenly France. Through the grace of holy friendship, we share in this royal calling. Divine friendship is founded on God's love, justice, and mercy, forming the essence of union with Jesus and Mary. Divine friendship, often called a union of hearts, is this devotion's remarkable and indelible sign.
Friendship, when it is genuine, is not readily affected, by these reversals of fortune. Based on the beauty of the soul, it arises from regions more liberal, purer, and deeper than any other affection.
Friendship is born from one soul into another soul; and the soul has value only in itself. Once we meet there, everything else disappears.
And yet, by an admiral privilege, time confirms friendship… like two rocks overhanging similar waves and showing them unwavering resistance, so do they notice the flow of years vainly attacking the unchanging harmony of their hearts.[1]
A friendship between souls requires a journey whereby the “harmony of their hearts” is fine-tuned for the heavenly choir. Divine friendship is not merely an affection but an ongoing story of hearts uniting across time and space between souls purified in the blood of Christ. In this sense, divine friendship with St. Joan - and St. Thérèse as our interpreter of Joan’s life - has a fairytale quality revealing the appearance of the hidden story of Magdalene as it appears in our personal testimony and devotional expressions. This phenomenological expression emerges as a gift through an existential encounter, a “divine glance,” into the combined hearts of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. This encounter can be a moment in time or gradual but always draws the soul into a state of mind and heart which is the beginning of a holy friendship with St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, our guides on this journey to Magdalene’s France.
The process for responding to the call to holy friendship with St. Joan and St. Thérèse begins with a sense of being ‘urged’ by the Holy Spirit to discover the meaning of the divine glance. What is this? What is this love and affection for Joan and Thérèse? What does it mean? I must search it out! This leads to descriptive reflection and journaling as our means of searching. New maps of meaning emerge in our interior. We begin to connect the various nodes of meaning into a ‘story.’ The story reveals ‘that which we are not yet’ but toward which we are called. The story develops further as we contemplate, reflect, and journal. Empathy with St. Joan as we understand her through the hermeneutics of St. Thérèse becomes the foundation of our newly formed map of meaning. We begin to see as she sees based on our empathic understanding of her own map of meaning. The ‘syntax’ developing the coherence of the larger story emerges through the Magdalene, the foundress of our heavenly French royal line. Mary Magdalene, as the interior spiritual being of France, is the ‘gestalt’ image of this story.
Jesus Christ had left his mother to Jerusalem, St. Peter to Rome, St. John to Asia; to whom would he bequeath Mary Magdalene?
We already know; it was France that received from the hand of God that part of the testament of His Son.[2]
As the heavenly form we seek in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, France is bequeathed in divine friendship to the interior being, the gestalt image of Mary Magdalene. This we can confirm by the testimony of history and tradition.[3] Through her heart and in her friendship, we will enter fully into divine friendship with Jesus and Mary in this holy Kingdom prepared for us. This is the Kingdom toward which St. Joan and St. Thérèse, our French royal sisters in heaven, lead us.
[1] Lacordaire, OP, The Life of St. Mary Magdalene, 11–12.
[2] Lacordaire, OP, 58.
[3] McClosky, The Life of St. Mary Magdalene - The Life Story of St. Mary Magdalene the First Apostle and Apostle to the Apostles as Theological Biography, 202–3.