Sent by God

The Mission of Jehanne d'Arc.

“I was in my father’s garden and was fasting,” Joan recounts. “And a voice came from the right, towards the church.” She was 13 at the time and quite afraid. Thenceforth, she would be visited by the voices and apparitions of Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret. Saint Michael was especially revered in Lorraine, and the statues of Saints Catherine and Margaret still grace the village church. These saints would inform Joan that God had entrusted her with saving the kingdom of France and seeing that its crown was bestowed on Charles VII, the “King of Bourges.”

Joan’s piety redoubled without causing her to lose balance. By then, she was considered “the most virtuous girl in town,” as the parish priest would attest. What the good folks of Domremy — and even Joan’s own mother — did not know, was that a germinating seed had been planted in the soil of her soul.