This article first appeared in Our Sunday Visitor magazine. Subscribe to receive the monthly magazine here.
Quotes attributed to popular saints often go through a sort of historical telephone game before they reach modern ears. As Trent Horn points out in his 2018 book “What the Saints Never Said: Pious Misquotes and the Subtle Heresies They Teach You” (Catholic Answers), the main idea tends to hold, but the emphasis often gets skewed in a way that serves contemporary philosophy better than time-tested theology.
Such is the case with St. Joan of Arc’s purported declaration, “I am not afraid; I was born to do this.” Obviously God has been all but removed from this statement, which should raise a red flag when we consider these words are supposedly those of a canonized saint.
Particular graces
In this instance, as in others, something said in a specific situation is taken out of that context. It would seem that as Joan was embarking on her mission to save France, someone asked her how she could press on when she knew there were soldiers on every side. In reply, Joan countered that the road was made open to her, “and if the soldiers come, I have God, my Lord, who will know how to clear the route. … It was for this that I was born!”
The saint did not suggest that she, on her own, was unstoppable. Instead, she remarked on her particular call, the particular graces the Lord had bestowed on her, and the particular time and place in which certain events would unfold.
Sometimes it can seem that, because we have faith, we ought to believe ourselves invincible. Nothing is impossible with God, after all. But that mindset can be crippling if we take it to mean we have to solve every problem we encounter.
Knowing who you are
God will absolutely supply the graces we need to conform our will to his. We have a great cloud of witnesses in heaven, Joan among them, to intercede for us in our vocations. To recognize and respond to that fully first means discerning what it is that we are called to — and what we are not called to.
Just as God chose St. Joan of Arc to live in a particular time and particular place to engage in certain events and develop certain relationships, so too does he set us in the particular time and place in which we find ourselves.
To push back against that, to seek more or less, is a protest against the Lord. St. Joan of Arc could respond to his call and, in doing so, change the course of history because she first knew who God was and who she was, and she was willing to submit entirely to that reality. Her battle cry ought not to be misunderstood as a proclamation of independence but rather as a joyful shout of obedience. With her intercession, we can hope to do the same.
