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Joan Died Triumphant

Joan Died Triumphant

Last updated on: May 30, 2015 at 3:01 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Joan Died Triumphant 2015-05-30T15:01:07-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Joan of Arc was Triumphant

My daughter played “Joan of Arc” in the play Triumphant this weekend and I saw again why I love the Maid of Orleans. She is strong, right, and unselfish, but enough about my daughter. Joan of Arc is an icon of powerful, holy, brave womanhood that my daughter Jane exemplifies and we have never needed Joan more.

Joan is worthy of honor and if she was also a touch mad, then it was the madness that happens when human beings come close to the Divine. Our folly is revealed when we see incarnate Holy Wisdom. Our vision cannot stand that much light and we become dazzled. When Joan, or people like her, turn from the vision to the dark caves we have made and called culture, they do not see as well in our twilight as those who never experienced the Sun.

Joan came to God, she saw, and she conquered for France. We may not need the French hero, but we do need feminine, muscular, holy visions of Christian life. To fringe Christians who would not send their daughters to college, Joan stands as a rebuke. If God can send Joan to save France and fight the English, parents can send their child to State U.

This weekend marks the anniversary of her “end.” Joan was captured, Joan was tried, and Joan died and so won her cause more than any military victory could have achieved. Making the Dauphin of France the King of France was good in the short term, but given his weakness, not great for the long term. Giving France an icon, a symbol, and a saint helped save a nation in some danger of falling to pieces.

Joan died and lives. If you want to know why Joan matters, take a look at the art she has inspired.

Watch

My favorite film centers on the passion story of Joan. Don’t be put off by black and white or the fact it is a silent film. The silvery sheen is appropriate to the mystical tale and the grays, whites, and blacks express more color than most summer blockbusters. The acting is so intense that at times I forget that I am not watching a documentary. The motion picture (surely not a mere movie) reminds Christians that the poor matter and the rich, especially in the Church, are often corrupt and become oppressors. Her oppressors play politics for power, while Joan loves God and France. She is a patriot and they are patricides of the Fatherland. The film reminds us to love God, love the poor, and love our nation.

This message is needed just now.

The best book Mark Twain ever wrote not containing a character named Huck was on Joan of Arc. If you think Twain was just the misogynistic creeper based on his autobiography (mercifully hidden for one hundred years), Joan of Arc shows a better side of the man. Twain may have postured as anti-religious, a skeptic, and lived as a lout, but the story of Joan of Arc captured him.

Here was history. Here was a person who was brave and whose reality he could not dismiss. You could say that she was mad, but if she was crazy, then crazy looked better than much of the nineteenth century. Wagnerian heroes would have been short work for the Maid of Orleans. This is a book by Samuel Clemens, the soul created in the image of God, and not by Mark Twain, a fiction created by Samuel Clemens.

Twain may not have believed in the God of the Bible, but by the end of the book I am convinced he believed in Joan. He presents her as a strong person and a fully realized person. He managed for once to see women as human and not just as incidentals to advance the story or props to the male characters. Joan of Arc could not redeem the old sinner, but she made a better man of him for a few hundred pages.

Twain found a woman he did not patronize.

Lesser lights just keep writing about Joan. I have tried my hand at telling her story twice and never quite captured her fully. She is mythic, but also real. We know so much about her having almost-transcripts of her trial. She is a saint, but flawed: prophetic, but sometimes mistaken.

Our house has a stained glass window, rescued from E bay, of the Saint and it illuminates our minds. It is also only one side of Joan: the myth, the icon, the saint. There is also the Maid: a woman leading armies and inspiring France. Our house also holds three women who look to Joan as an example and from Joan to the Christ who inspired her. These women are not stain glass, but incarnate souls. They fight for our family, they serve God in tough times, and they are willing to lose in the short term to win Paradise.

That is the ultimate message of Joan: in the Kingdom of God, winning may be losing. She saw His kingdom come and His will done, even if her own will and desires failed.

Blessed Joan, may you be an example to me tonight.

The Spirit of Joan lives on.

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