The Jehannian-Thérèsian Model – clarity of mind, agility of thought, and pureness of heart
How do we make this phenomenology of Joan and Thérèse a reality?
The goal of The Dove and Rose is to help us unite our hearts, minds, and souls in a divinely infused friendship with St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the two celestial patronesses chosen for us by Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary. This friendship with Joan and Thérèse is an expressive outpouring of charity, justice, and mercy from the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. More specifically we refer to St. Joan and St. Thérèse’s combined French Catholic spirituality as the means Divine Providence has chosen for us to become fully who we are destined to be in the mystical, beautiful “living garden of souls,”[1] to use St. Thérèse’s metaphor. Rephrased, the goal is to ascend the Dionysian stairway (Stein, op.cit.) to mystical France by being intuitively “present” with Joan and Thérèse in a union of hearts as they are to each other in clarity of mind, agility of thought, and pureness of heart. Our divine friendship with them is brought-to-being by a coming-to-understand in these modes of being received through grace. It is our way of ascending the stairway through both intellect and will with Joan and Thérèse.
As clarity, agility, and purity are manifestations of glory revealed in the body of the resurrected Christ which we are promised as heirs with Him,[2] our project invites our saintly sisters to form these same attributes in us through their intercessory care. We draw closer to them through a phenomenological understanding and transcend to know them ever more fully here on earth as they know each other in Heaven through clarity of intuition and agility of correlative insight whereby we contemplate the connections revealed across an ever-expanding panorama of meaning. We call the constitution of these "categorical" intuitions "following the science of the Saints,"[3] or in our metaphorical language, "Walking the Trail of the Dogmatic Creed with St. Joan and St. Thérèse." Thus, this work is about bringing the Father's Kingdom "on earth as it is in Heaven" in union with our saintly sisters, Joan and Thérèse. Through grace we ascend the Dionysian stairway by these Heavenly attributes of clarity, agility, and pureness so as to unite ourselves with Jesus, Mary, and the saints in one panorama of unity and wholeness.
How do we make this phenomenology of Joan and Thérèse a reality? How do we "walk the Trail of the Dogmatic Creed" with them to the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary? We share life-stories about them to transcendently share their mode of being with them.
“In either case, one spirit, by joining with another, comes to share in the other’s mode of being.”[4]
Empathy is a mode of being in union with them. Through this empathic union, they lead us to contemplation of the self-evident truths held within our own life-story. These self-evident truths unite into meaningful, higher level categorical intuitions. Through holy realism we construct our new world view. With that, our liturgical, spiritual, and religious lives become the material by which we ascend the stairway to Heaven. They become the very means by which we come to realize our place in the Kingdom of Heaven with Joan and Thérèse - as much as possible here, and to be fulfilled entirely only in heaven.
Yet, more than being simply “our” place, it is where we fit in community with others, in the communion of saints; it is our place in the “garden of souls” in the Kingdom. And this is what we all are looking for in our liturgical, spiritual, and religious lives - to come to understand who we are in the Kingdom.
Thérèse influences us through the ascent of the soul in mystical prayer while Joan influences us through the ascent of understanding the nature of the Kingdom. Together they lead us to a deep comprehension of who we are in the mind of God and where we fit in this Kingdom.
[1] Thérèse, The Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, 22. “And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord's living garden.”
[2] Holy Bible - The Verse It: All(TM) Edition - Catholic Douay-Rheims Version, Luke 24.
[3] Stein, The Science of the Cross (The Collected Works of Edith Stein Vol. 6)., 40. “Such realism, when it leads a holy soul to accept the truths of faith, becomes the science of the saints.”
[4] Stein, Potency and Act - Studies Toward a Philosophy of Being, loc. 2064.