“Just another nasty woman doing bad things” hailed the graffiti in front of the statue of the Maid of Orleans. “She would have killed them for writing that in English,” quipped my novice brother. 

A saint is a powerful icon. One that projects courage, fortitude, and moral authority. Recognizing this, activist movements have readily commandeered the stories of such holy men and women for the purpose of their own goals, often with little regard for the saints’ actual values and motives. The graffitist’s appropriation of Saint Joan of Arc for political ends is nothing new. Beginning with her own contemporaries, movements have adopted St. Joan as the poster child of their cause-de-jour: Joan, the French nationalist; Joan, the feminist; even Joan, the transvestite.

But St. Joan of Arc was none of these things. She was, first and foremost, a servant of God. Any presentation of her life that ignores this central fact is merely a caricature that obscures the true message every saint presents to the world: To love God is to do his will (Matt 7:21).

Saint Joan of Arc, however, refutes woke mischaracterizations with her own testimony. As Mark Twain wrote, her biography is “the only one whose validity is confirmed to us by oath,” and, through the records of her trial and process of rehabilitation, St. Joan’s own words and actions show that she was driven not by motives of politics or gender, but by the firm conviction that she was an instrument of God’s will. The entirety of her life witnesses to the fact that loving God requires that we conform our will to his.

Having been given a mission and a message from God, the teenaged Joan could not be diverted or delayed in fulfilling God’s will. Like David and Gideon at the stream, Joan did not pause to consider the material impossibility of what was asked of her. She placed her faith in God’s command and encouraged the troops with the confidence that they were carrying out God’s will. Frustrated that Charles VII wanted her to rest on her victories rather than fulfill the entirety of her divine mission, St. Joan left the royal court to continue the campaign. When she was captured by the Burgundians and handed over to the English, she defended her actions with simplicity, declaring, “I wait upon God, my Creator, in everything. I love him with all my heart . . . I wait upon my Judge: he is the King of Heaven and of earth” (The Trial Of Jeanne D’arc, 292).

This determined devotion to fulfilling God’s will is what made Joan of Arc a saint. She was canonized not in recognition of her military victories or in reparation for her unjust execution, but because “from her example, all Christians may learn that obedience to the will of God is holy and devout, and obtain from her the grace to convert their fellow citizens to obtain heavenly life” (Divina Disponente).

The distorted re-presentation of St. Joan of Arc proffered by misguided social movements is all the more ridiculous because she understood that doing the Father’s will meant conforming her own will to his. Such a concept is abhorrent to these movements of radical self-determination. Saints like Joan of Arc show us that it is only by such a voluntary subjection to God through faith that we can properly love God. By offering our will to God in love, we, like St. Joan, may act as his instruments, helping to carry out his will on earth as it is in heaven.  

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Image: Charles-Henri Michel, Joan of Arc Having Her Standard Blessed in Blois