A Jehannian-Thérèsian Model of French Catholic Spiritual Renewal
Understanding our life-story through the life-stories of St. Joan and St. Thérèse
The French Royal Hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse
The Jehannian-Thérèsian model of the French royal hearts of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux was developed through the influence of the life of St. Joan of Arc, Thérèsian Carmelite spirituality, and the philosophical lens of Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross). Its aim is Faith, Hope, and Love "on earth as it is in Heaven" through the majesty of French Catholic spirituality and True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Its means is personalized, phenomenological devotion to the combined hearts and spirituality of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
The Jehannian-Thérèsian Model
Understanding our life-story through the life-stories of St. Joan and St. Thérèse
Royaume France is a story. We could even say that it is a story about stories. It is our own life-story as experienced through the transcendent life-stories of two magnificent French saints, St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. We share their stories and grow into our own with them as we journey to the mystical Kingdom of Catholic and Royal France in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. They lead us on a spiritual journey through their life-stories and the self-evident truths expressed in them. We understand our relationship with Mary, the Mother of God with ever greater clarity. Through Mary, we grow into a union of hearts with Jesus Christ, her son. We call this our Jehannian-Thérèsian Model of True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
By sharing stories "about" Joan and Thérèse, we can say that we also are sharing transcendence "with" them. Sharing transcendence with them is a way of being in communion with them. Through this communion, they lead us in contemplation of the self-evident truths held within our own lives. We call these revealed illuminations "Divine Glances," a term coined by Edith Stein. With that, our liturgical, spiritual, and religious lives suddenly become more than just following rules while hoping to get 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 a place where we fit in community with others, in the communion of saints; it is our place in the panorama of 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 realization of who we are in the mind of God and where we fit in this Kingdom.
The Jehannian-Thérèsian Spirituality
My Jehannian-Thérèsian Story
I still have the image in my mind of the high plains outside of my childhood home of Guymon. I'm talking about Guymon of long ago, the one that has almost faded into the mist of my aging memory. The land and the sky both were as big and wide as the whole earth, at least it seemed. Occasionally, big dark clouds would form way out in the distance, and you could see the shadow beneath them made up of the rain falling over some distance acreage. The occasional flash of lightning would result in a low rumble maybe five seconds later. The clouds were ominous but not threatening, as they were miles away.
In my life-story, the land and these experiences infused into me the spiritual model I would come to actualize over the course of my life. What I received from the land was a sense of divine order. My response was a form of "empathy" with that land.
Later this empathy was catalyzed through St. Thérèse of Lisieux' descriptive metaphor of spirituality as a panoramic landscape. Through her I was introduced to Joan of Arc who, I discovered, had the exact relationship with her land that I did with mine, only hers was at a much more profound level. This led to an immediate sense of kinship and to an "empathic devotion" to Joan of Arc, whom I trusted could develop and fully actualize Thérèse's panorama in my soul. I could trust no other at her level in the created order. Only she could lead me, and this by command of the Divine Will.
This empathic devotion with Joan led to an understanding through her eyes of Catholic and Royal France as a representation and incarnation of this divine order. Joan's Catholic and Royal France became for me the event horizon between Heaven and earth in this divine order.
That is the story of how I became introduced to the Jehannian-Thérèsian model and came to understand my own story as reflected in the stories of Joan and Thérèse. The nature of this devotion came about through a sharing of ideas with the French heroines, Joan and Thérèse, and an understanding of how their self-evident truths revealed the truths of my own life.
Books
Edith Stein - our Philosophy mentor
Edith Stein is our philosophy mentor for the journey
The development of our life-story as we journey with St. Joan and St. Thérèse reveals the self evident truths of our lives in light of their own. These truths become axioms upon which we derive further insights. These axiomatic insights need philosophical underpinnings in order to create an enduring framework. Edith Stein, whom we know as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, is our invaluable and essential mentor in this effort. The reader will be challenged by the development of these underpinnings as the stories unfold and as the journey continues through the Jehannian-Thérèsian Model of Royaume France,
"While it is the task of theology to establish the facts of revelation as such and to elaborate their specific meaning and interrelation, it is the task of philosophy to harmonize those propositions at which it has arrived by using its own devices together with the truths of faith and theology. Only thus can reality be made intelligible in its ultimate reasons and causes." ~ Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being
Royaume France is the story of my own illumination stemming from this communion with St. Joan and St. Thérèse. The step-by-step mentorship of Edith Stein revealed it. The reader will encounter this challenging process as he or she moves through the content.
The development of Royaume France was in accord with the following principles:
"For Thomas, the first axiom of philosophy—if we wish to use the word—is that God himself is the first Truth, the principle and criterion of all truth. From God proceeds any truth we can get hold of. The task of first philosophy follows from this fact: it must take God as its object. It must set forth the idea of God and the mode of his being and knowing.
Then it must establish the relationship to God of whatever else that exists, in its essence and existence, and the relationship to the divine knowledge of the knowledge of other knowing beings. We must bring to bear on these questions everything we can know about them, taking what we should not only from natural knowledge but also from revelation." ~ Edith Stein, Knowledge and Faith (The Collected Works of Edith Stein, vol. 8, Kindle locations 818 and 821)
The Jehannian-Thérèsian Pearl of Great Price
The Royaume France approach is uniquely reductive
I have written extensively on the subject of empathic devotion to St. Joan of Arc. Our Lord and Our Lady have transformed my life through this uniquely powerful relationship. The Holy Spirit has willed to provide the sanctifying grace I need in hierarchical fashion, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary and then through St. Joan. I have been fascinated for over a decade as to the process and mode of this grace. It feels as though I am called to think it through for whatever mysterious purpose that thinking out, that modeling of the grace, serves the Kingdom of God.
The key aid has been Edith Stein, known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Stein was a pre-conversion phenomenologist who, post-conversion, reconciled phenomenology with the scholasticism of the Church. The result has been a treasury of knowledge for my cause. Edith Stein integrated modern philosophical thought with the ancient tradition of the Church. She is modern without being a modernist, a spiritual talent sorely needed in contemporary society.
Her description of the need to engage a mentor, even across time and space, by studying their thinking from “grounds to conclusions” overwhelmed me as being most appropriate for understanding my own devotion to Joan, my mentor. It was my first reflection on empathy from Edith Stein’s perspective and the beginning of my articulation of “empathic devotion.” I began to realize that it was empathy, in the Steinian sense, that I felt with Joan of Arc. I wanted to go where she goes, to follow in her footsteps to the pearl of great price. This empathy, this tracing of footsteps, when understood through the harmonization of the revealed truths discovered in this communion, also can be called a reduction. We are interested in understanding Joan's mind, heart, and soul by reducing her life's story to its core essence. In this way, we truly can follow her to that pearl of great price from "grounds to conclusions."
Le Royaume de France Catholique - Que La vierge marie prient pour nous!
