The Philosophical Foundations of Le Royaume
Phase 5 – Beyond the Counterrevolution with St. Joan of Arc
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The fifth phase of the Le Royaume Program is understanding and reintegrating our intellect with our newly created hearts. To engage our mind in Le Royaume is to direct it philosophically in accord with the movement of the Dove and Rose heart as inspired by St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse. Ours is not a skeptical, progressive synthesis. Ours is reintegration, a re-ordering of mind and heart according to the Divine Order.
“We might say that our values, and we with them, are re-”in”-tegrated after being “dis”- integrated in the spiritual wastelands where we had been living. Our good earthly values in time and space fall into proper place in the eternal schema of the Divine Order in the Kingdom. That order, threaded together in the Holy Spirit, edifies and brings life to the whole through unity in the one Divine Principle End, Who is God.”
~ From my book, The Dove and Rose: Personal reflections on devotion to St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
To do this, we must understand the questions that now need answering. Our Dove and Rose hearts seek a kingdom with St. Joan of Arc as our celestial leader, the conquering of which requires a new perspective. This new perspective evokes further questions. From this, we now know that our heart, our understanding, precedes our rationality.
“The certainty of being is an unreflective certainty, and it precedes all our rational knowledge.”
~ Edith Stein. Potency and Act (The Collected Works of Edith Stein) (Kindle Location 484). Kindle Edition.
Thus, we must reflect anew on our meaning and purpose. We must go deeper than merely understanding Joan of Arc’s reasoning. We must explore the very ground by which it is constituted. The question is not “what she believed” but “why did she believe it.” Understanding “what” is academic and will not bring us to an act of the will; understanding “why” will clear the pathway and free us to make that act an action necessary for our sanctification and salvation.
“Philosophical understanding is different. The philosopher must not only be able to see and show the fact that someone else went about it in such and such a way; his insight must not only extend to the connections between the other’s grounds [Grund] and consequences. The philosopher must also grasp why his predecessor went about it like this. He must get down into the grounds themselves and grasp them. And this means that the grounds must grip him and best him in the sense that he decides to accept them and retraces within himself the path the other followed from grounds to conclusions, perhaps even going beyond him. Or else he must best the grounds; I mean, he must decide to get free of them and take another path.”
~ Ibid. Edith Stein.
Here is the precise integration locus on the Trail of the Dogmatic Creed with St. Joan of Arc. We seek to understand her philosophical ground, not simply her point of view alone. In Phase 2 – The March of Hope with Joan of Arc – we received that new point of view from the saint. It led us by the heart along the mystical Trail to the kingdom. Now, however, we are asked to make an act of our will to accept it.
To walk the Trail in a relationship with Joan of Arc, as Our Lord and Our Lady will for us, we must be willing to accept our saintly sister's premises. We either accept our celestial patroness' grounds for belief or we reject them. In Phase 5 – Beyond the Counterrevolution, we accept them. We do not follow our prideful intellectual whims; we "retrace within ourselves the path the other followed." Our conclusions are based not on our own premises but on those of St. Joan of Arc, grounded in Jesus Christ and his Church. Joan becomes the instrument of our understanding, which is to say, she leads us on the Trail of the Dogmatic Creed. By God's will, she is the channel of grace in this matter. Our Lord formed Joan perfectly in her understanding which crowned a king and brought about the miraculous freedom of France. Our Lord has declared to her, "Well done, good and faithful servant because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord." ~ Matthew 25:21
One of the heavenly things over which Our Lord placed Joan is that of leading us to the Kingdom Blessed of St. Joan and St. Thérèse in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. To be guided there by her, we must be transformed through her mind and heart.