An inspiration for our times

Coached by Joan of Arc: Lessons in Virtuous Leadership
Alexandre Havard
Scepter Publishers
2022
101 pages
ISBN 978-1594174506

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This is certainly a book with a very different approach. Instead of the author himself doing the “coaching” he lets Joan do the talking based on real events in her short but extraordinary life which ended almost six hundred years ago. At first, reading the words of Joan from beyond the grave cause a shock, but the author keeps up that style and it is really effective.

The book has fifteen short chapters with titles such as Finding Victory in Defeat, Be Aware of Your Strength, Create a Plan for Personal Growth, Cultivate Filial Piety, Help Yourself and Heaven Will Help You, Discover Your Mission, Purify Your Intention, Do Not Fear Public Opinion and several others. Then, at the end of each chapter, the author offers some practical advice based on the theme just dealt with.

In each chapter the author has Joan guiding us as she refers to the various events. In the first chapter the reader is immediately thrust into a narrative where Joan speaks about her martyrdom and how despite the fact that the English achieved a victory of sorts by having her denounced as a heretic and burned at the stake, the French army she inspired turned the tables and routed the English not many years later.

For those of us with limited knowledge of the Hundred Years’ War which raged between France and England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, or of Joan’s life and times there is a very useful chronology at the end of the book which it would be useful to read first.

Easy to read and written in language that is very attuned to the twenty first century, this book is ideal reading for teenagers navigating the challenges of today’s culture and also for anyone with ambitions to live a virtuous life. It combines practical human advice with insights into how to purify our intentions and live as good children of God.

Many have an image of Joan of Arc as a battling warrior but with no insight into the interior life of a canonised saint. As well as talking to us about virtuous leadership, this book shows us how Joan was inspired by God to take up the struggle on behalf of her nation, even though it led to an early death. I can wholeheartedly recommend it.

At the beginning of each chapter there are illustrations of paintings, statues and other representations of Joan, some in battle dress, others more tender but all of them beautiful images of the woman whom Mark Twain described as “easily and by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced”.