St. Joan to Pentecost

It's Pentecost Sunday. This had been one of my favorite days of the year, back in my previous life as a Charismatic, since it's when the Holy Spirit descended as tongues of fire. I loved the imagery.

Check out Cathy's blog for a great post on the going's on around the Twin Cities on this day. I see Father George from Lourdes commented that even the Europeans make it illegal to disrupt a religious ceremony. On the other hand, our country has almost made it illegal to stop people from disrupting a religious ceremony.

I made it through the homeschool conference and managed to reign in my almost overwhelming desire to buy oodles of stuff. It's a good thing I don't own a bookstore because nothing would get done and I'd burn through all the profits on more books! I did buy a few things, but the stubby pile I pulled out of my bag and set on the dining room table was pretty disappointing. After all the shopping I had done, after all the inspiring books and resources I saw, I didn't have much to show for my time there. That isn't to say I didn't get things I needed, because I really did, it's just most of the things I came home with were essentials, not anything from my "wish list."

I did manage to get the math curriculum manual, which is normally $65 for $30. That was my main goal, so in that respect, the conference was a complete success!

Because of the conference, I wasn't able to post yesterday on St. Joan of Arc, who was martyed on 30 May 1431. My father's birthday was May 30 and it's traditionally Memorial Day, so I remember them both on this day.

A few months ago, a mom in our homeschool group arranged a great tour of the Cathedral of St. Paul. Found out then that there is a stone from the prison cell of St. Joan's displayed behind the main altar, where all the small chapels to various nations are. Of course, when I was there, I had to touch the stone and ask for this great saint's intercession!



I went to the Cathedral of St. Paul's website, but there was no information about this that I could find. There is a lot of information available on the internet on St. Joan, so will be quite brief here.

St. Joan, ora pro nobis.

Born at Domremy in Champagne, probably on 6 January, 1412; died at Rouen, 30 May, 1431. The village of Domremy lay upon the confines of territory which recognized the suzerainty of the Duke of Burgundy, but in the protracted conflict between the Armagnacs (the party of Charles VII, King of France), on the one hand, and the Burgundians in alliance with the English, on the other, Domremy had always remained loyal to Charles.

*snip

Twenty-four years later a revision of her trial, the procès de réhabilitation, was opened at Paris with the consent of the Holy See. The popular feeling was then very different, and, with but the rarest exceptions, all the witnesses were eager to render their tribute to the virtues and supernatural gifts of the Maid. The first trial had been conducted without reference to the pope; indeed it was carried out in defiance of St. Joan's appeal to the head of the Church. Now an appellate court constituted by the pope, after long inquiry and examination of witnesses, reversed and annulled the sentence pronounced by a local tribunal under Cauchon's presidency. The illegality of the former proceedings was made clear, and it speaks well for the sincerity of this new inquiry that it could not be made without inflicting some degree of reproach upon both the King of France and the Church at large, seeing that so great an injustice had been done and had so long been suffered to continue unredressed. Even before the rehabilitation trial, keen observers, like Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini (afterwards Pope Pius II), though still in doubt as to her mission, had discerned something of the heavenly character of the Maid. In Shakespeare's day she was still regarded in England as a witch in league with the fiends of hell, but a juster estimate had begun to prevail even in the pages of Speed's "History of Great Britaine" (1611). By the beginning of the nineteenth century the sympathy for her even in England was general. Such writers as Southey, Hallam, Sharon Turner, Carlyle, Landor, and, above all, De Quincey greeted the Maid with a tribute of respect which was not surpassed even in her own native land. Among her Catholic fellow-countrymen she had been regarded, even in her lifetime, as Divinely inspired.

At last the cause of her beatification was introduced upon occasion of an appeal addressed to the Holy See, in 1869, by Mgr Dupanloup, Bishop of Orléans, and, after passing through all its stages and being duly confirmed by the necessary miracles, the process ended in the decree being published by Pius X on 11 April, 1909. A Mass and Office of St. Joan, taken from the "Commune Virginum," with "proper" prayers, have been approved by the Holy See for use in the Diocese of Orléans.