My Life with St. Joan and St. Thérèse - Chapter 8 (Third Edition)
From that day forward, St. Joan and I have been inseparable.
“You must be the one from Illinois we were expecting!”
The middle-aged woman behind the table in the seminary vestibule greeted me warmly. She sat just beyond the couch where I had slept for an hour and a half, looking cheerful and clearly better rested than I was. At 5:30 a.m., when I had walked by in a daze, I hadn’t noticed the table. Now, at 7:00 a.m. on July 17, 2006, it was alive with activity—and more importantly, with someone who seemed ready to help. This was the registration desk. Registration had opened.
I probably looked and smelled like a dog.
“Yes! It took me approximately thirteen hours driving all night to get here. I arrived around 5:30 this morning. I didn’t know what to do, so I just slept on the couch.”
“Wow,” she exclaimed, “The Lord will really bless you for the sacrifice you made.”
Thankfully, the kind woman wasted no time in showing me my room and the essential facilities. We began with the chapel around the corner, then moved to the cafeteria. After that, we ascended a staircase to the dormitory area, where she emphasized the location of the showers. Finally, she directed me to the conference room where the week’s first full meeting would begin at 9:00 a.m. With a smile, she waved and disappeared down the staircase.
After settling into my room, I stepped out into the narrow hallway. It seemed I was at the end of the hall. A door faced me, right next to my room. I opened it, and to my delight, I found a small balcony with a chair that overlooked the beautiful chapel sanctuary. The view was unique and breathtaking. I stood above and level with the altar and tabernacle below. At any time of day or night, I could sit on the balcony chair and adore the Eucharist. Directly ahead of me, against the far wall, stood a tall and lovely statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It amazed me. Things were looking up. I stepped back into the hallway, closed my “secret door” to the chapel balcony, and headed for that much-needed shower.
After a day filled with stimulating spiritual reflections, silent meals, and awkward smiles exchanged with people I wasn’t supposed to speak to, the priest leading the retreat, Fr. Bill, held confessions. I waited for about half an hour before my turn came. Sitting in front of Fr. Bill, I poured out my heart. After reciting my Act of Contrition, he absolved me of my sins and blessed me. I went directly to the silent, serene chapel. Walking toward the altar, I genuflected and crossed myself before the Eucharistic tabernacle, which now held the real and substantial Body and Blood of Jesus Christ after the day’s Mass. Then, I approached the beautiful, tall statue representing the Virgin Mary.
Something happened when I did. I don’t know exactly what it was, but something happened. In my heart, I felt these words as I looked up:
“I have always been with you. You have always had the Holy Spirit. I am the channel of the Holy Spirit for you.”
That moment destroyed the Beast. The Beast was dead. The Beast—something no doctor, spiritualist, psychoanalyst, or pill had ever killed—was dead. I was a free man, most genuinely and profoundly. The chains of hell fell away from me that evening.
The next day, during the second-morning conference, Fr. Bill read scripture to us. Four words resonated in my newly emancipated mind:
“Seek first the Kingdom….”
Those four words consumed me throughout the retreat. They continue to consume me to this day. Seek first the Kingdom. The Blessed Virgin Mary had given me my marching orders. The power of the Holy Spirit and the infinite merits of Jesus Christ’s incarnation, life, passion, death, and resurrection healed me, not for returning to the spiritual pigsty of the world, but for finding life in Christ’s Kingdom. Seek first the Kingdom of God.
Thus began my journey to seek first that kingdom. Seeking first the Kingdom would become the process by which the Virgin Mary, with St. Joan and St. Thérèse, would tend the garden of my soul—newly broken, plowed, and pulverized, twenty painful years in the making. Seeking first the Kingdom would be the means by which the rose of grace Our Lady had given me in Guymon, in exchange for my roses to her, would burst forth and reach upward toward the warmth and life-giving radiance of the Son.
It was some years later, in fact, before the full significance of July 17 hit me. I knew something remarkable had happened on my drive to freedom on July 16, the Feast Day of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, exactly twenty years after my consecration to Mary. Our Lady and Thérèse had united their hearts with mine through the Carmelite spirit. However, one day I felt inspired to reflect on July 17. I couldn’t pinpoint why. I picked up Hilaire Belloc’s book, Joan of Arc, from my office bookshelf. When I opened it, I read:
“The Sunday, the seventeenth day of July in the year of Our Lord fourteen hundred and twenty-nine, the Dauphin Charles rode in with company for the crowning… With strong and many tears, [Joan] said: ‘High-born King, now is the will of God accomplished. For He it was who ordained that I should free Orleans and bring you here to this city of Rheims for your sacring…’”
Joan’s day of victory was July 17. On that day, the otherwise impossibly defeated Dauphin of France became the King of France with the powerful help of Joan of Arc, against all odds and after a lifetime of defeat.
I was no Dauphin and certainly no King of France. But on that same day, I achieved victory, against all odds, and after a lifetime of defeat. I have cherished the inspiration that led me to this insight. I treasure it as a beautiful message from the Holy Spirit through Mary, revealing that St. Joan of Arc was intimately involved in my healing on July 17, 2006. From that day forward, St. Joan and I have been inseparable.
I drove to victory on the day of Carmel. I experienced healing on the following day, which was Joan of Arc’s day. St. Joan and St. Thérèse then led me along the path of the Dogmatic Creed, the goal of this journey being the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, where Christ reigns in all His glory. The goal is the full flowering of Mary’s rose of grace—the most beautiful color in the Heavens—the rose representing the combined spirituality of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
She desires me to carry this rose with her to Jesus. That rose of the “most beautiful color in the Heavens” finally broke through the newly fertile soil of my soul through the intercession of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, with the heavenly maternal help of the Virgin Mary.
That rose must now continue to reach upward.