Philosophical Foundations of Le Royaume
Philosophical Foundations of Le Royaume
Axiomatic, Systematic, Symbolic Spirituality
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Le Royaume demonstrates “axiomatic, systematic, symbolic” spirituality and human development from potency to act. It is about uniting ourselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the seed of the Kingdom of God on earth, the Catholic Church. Le Royaume can be a model and guide for similar spiritual longings, even if they differ.
This “system” is grounded in the example of Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and her fearless search for understanding of the phenomenon known as The Annunciation. It is a search inspired by Heaven that draws us upward through the heart and in the obedience of faith as demonstrated by our Holy Mother. We “seek first the kingdom” and learn how to “ponder these things in our hearts” with the help of our sisters in Christ, St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. We then bring down the Kingdom “on earth as it is in Heaven.” In other words, the system is about living the prayer of the Our Father through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, mainly through the pedagogy of French Catholic spirituality and the Kingdom of Catholic and Royal France.
“[Mary] does not remain locked in her initial troubled state at the proximity of God in his angel, but she seeks to understand. So Mary appears as a fearless woman, one who remains composed even in the presence of something utterly unprecedented. At the same time she stands before us as a woman of great interiority, who holds heart and mind in harmony and seeks to understand the context, the overall significance of God’s message. In this way, she becomes an image of the Church as she considers the word of God, tries to understand it in its entirety and guards in her memory the things that have been given to her.”
~ Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narrative, p. 33
Taking Edith Stein’s method of correlating the scientific classifications of family, genus, and species analogously to the intellectual and spiritual life, we see Le Royaume as one species, that is, devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary’s mystical Kingdom of Catholic and royal France through the combined hearts of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. This Kingdom is part of a more general genus represented by St. Mary Magdalene on the shores of Provence. This genus is part of an even more general family, notably that of those consecrated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, which belongs to the even more general Kingdom of God. Therefore, Le Royaume may be relevant even if one’s predilection lies elsewhere in a different spiritual species or genus.
Le Royaume is designed to take one through the various phenomenological “axioms,” making up her construction in a “systematic” manner. It is founded on a specific definition of spirituality, again relying on Edith Stein, and cascades downward through Dionysian symbolic theology, Catholic phenomenology, and personal ontology – the process by which Le Royaume becomes part of our very “being.” It is about how grace harmonizes our various interfaces with Heaven, which is the world to come, and our current existence, which is the temporal world of potency and act leading to the world to come. Le Royaume relies on sanctifying grace in union with the actual graces Our Lord offers us to become who we indeed are in the “fullness of time.”
One of the striking outcomes of this axiomatic system is simplicity. Le Royaume is not about creating complexity. Conversely, it is about simplifying our complexity and harmonizing it with Heaven. The more we are drawn to Heaven, the more simple we become. God alone is simple in Himself. God is not composite; He is One. We, on the other hand, are finite, partial, and composite. We understand through composites and only partially so. Each of us can receive and reflect back only a portion of the unified whole that is God, much the way a single flower can reflect only a part of the single beauty of an entire panoramic landscape. Yet, the flower is what it is supposed to be, and the landscape would not be the same without it. Together the individual flowers, trees, rivers, and meadows make a composite whole reflecting the one form of “beauty.” This is the aim of the axiomatic system that is Le Royaume.
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