St. Joan of Arc

Almost everyone knows St. Joan of Arc. But almost no one knows why she's a saint. Well St. Joan of Arc was born in France in January 6, 1412. She is the patroness of soldiers and of France. What is very rare about St. Joan of Arc is that at a very early age, she heard voices: those of St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret. At first the messages were personal and general. Then at last came the crowning order. In May, 1428, her voices told Joan to go to the King of France and help him reconquer his kingdom. For at that time the English king was after the throne of France, and the Duke of Burgundy, the chief rival of the French king, was siding with him and gobbling up evermore French territory. Seventeen year old Joan of Arc was given a small army with which she raised the seige of Orleans on May 8, 1429.

In May 1430, as she was attempting to relieve Compiegne, she was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English when Charles and the French did nothing to save her. After months of imprisonment, she was tried at Rouen by a tribunal presided over by the infamous Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who hoped that the English would help him to become archbishop. When she refused to retract the assertion that it was the saints of God who had commanded her to do what she had done, she was condemned to death as a heretic, sorceress, and adulteress, and burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. She was nineteen years old. Some thirty years later, she was exonerated of all guilt and she was ultimately canonized in 1920, making official what the people had known for centuries. 

Her feast day is May 30.

St. Joan of Arc is without a doubt one of my favorite Saints. She lived a truly inspirational, although short,  life.

"One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying." -Joan of Arc