“In Your Hands Is My Destiny”

Fr. Scott Haynes

The Trial of St. Joan of Arc

A Meditation on Psalm 31

“You will free me from the snare they set for me, for you are my refuge… Into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Psalm 31 is not a quiet prayer written from the safety of a peaceful chapel. It is the cry of someone hunted, slandered, encircled by enemies who whisper and conspire. The psalmist hears the murmurs before he sees the danger. He senses that forces are gathering against him. His name is being discussed in dark corners. His future is being decided without him. The fear is real, and yet something stronger than fear rises in his heart: trust.

“I hear the whispers of the crowd, that frighten me from every side, as they consult together against me, plotting to take my life.”

To understand this psalm more deeply, it helps to see it lived in flesh and blood. Few lives illustrate it more vividly than that of Joan of Arc.

Joan was born in 1412 in a small village in France during the Hundred Years’ War, a brutal conflict between France and England that had already lasted for generations. France was fractured, demoralized, and politically unstable. Large portions of the country were under English control, and many French nobles were divided in loyalty. Into this chaos stepped a teenage peasant girl who claimed that saints had spoken to her and instructed her to help drive the English from France and bring the rightful French king, Charles VII, to his coronation.

To modern ears, that alone sounds extraordinary. To the people of her time, it sounded dangerous.

Joan was about seventeen when she persuaded local officials to bring her to the Dauphin, the uncrowned French heir. After careful questioning and examination by theologians, she was permitted to accompany French troops. Against all expectation, this young woman, who could neither read nor write, inspired soldiers who had grown weary and cynical. Under her influence, the siege of Orléans was lifted in 1429, a turning point in the war. Shortly afterward, Charles VII was crowned king at Reims, fulfilling what Joan said had been revealed to her.

For a brief moment she was celebrated. Crowds cheered her. Soldiers revered her. The king owed her a debt. But admiration in times of war is fragile, and politics is rarely grateful.

In 1430, during a military campaign, Joan was captured by Burgundian forces allied with the English. She was sold to the English and taken to Rouen, where she was imprisoned and subjected to a trial that was as much political theater as it was a legal proceeding. The English did not merely want her removed from the battlefield; they wanted her discredited. If she could be declared a heretic, then her claim of divine guidance would be exposed as fraud, and the legitimacy of Charles VII’s coronation would be undermined.

This is where Psalm 31 begins to breathe with painful clarity.

Imagine a nineteen-year-old girl, isolated in a stone prison, guarded not by sympathetic nuns but by hostile soldiers. She was chained, mocked, and denied the protections normally granted to ecclesiastical prisoners. She faced a panel of learned theologians and church officials who questioned her relentlessly, not in a spirit of open inquiry but in an effort to trap her in contradiction.

They asked subtle and dangerous questions. “Are you in the state of grace?” they demanded. If she answered yes, she would seem presumptuous, since no one can claim with certainty to be in grace. If she answered no, she would implicitly admit guilt. The question itself was a snare.

Her reply was luminous in its simplicity: “If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.” With that answer she slipped through the trap, not through cleverness, but through humility and trust.

“I hear the whispers of the crowd.”

Outside the courtroom, rumors circulated. Some called her a witch. Others accused her of pride, of rebellion, of deceit. The English authorities wanted a public condemnation, and so the pressure mounted. Day after day she endured interrogation. She was threatened with torture. She was shown the instruments that could be used against her. At one point she signed a document of abjuration under intense pressure, fearing execution, only to retract it shortly afterward when she realized she had been misled about its contents and implications.

From the outside, it looked as though the snares were tightening beyond escape.

“But my trust is in you, O LORD; I say, ‘You are my God.’ In your hands is my destiny.”

Joan’s destiny no longer lay in military victory or political triumph. It lay in a cold courtroom and a prison cell. The same girl who had once ridden before armies now stood alone before judges who had already determined the outcome. On May 30, 1431, she was led to the marketplace in Rouen to be executed by burning.

Witnesses record that she asked for a crucifix and held it before her eyes as the flames rose. She repeatedly cried out the name of Jesus. Those present, even some of her enemies, were moved to tears. An English soldier reportedly exclaimed that they had burned a saint.

In that moment, the psalm reached its deepest fulfillment in her life. “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” The snares had done their worst. The whispers had become a death sentence. Yet her spirit was not in the hands of her judges. It was in the hands of God.

Years later, a retrial ordered by the Church nullified the original condemnation, declaring it unjust. Centuries later she was canonized. The girl condemned as a heretic became recognized as a saint. The political scheme that sought to destroy her memory instead preserved it.

Psalm 31 teaches that destiny is not ultimately shaped by human plots. The enemies consult together, but God remains faithful. The crowd whispers, but God speaks the final word.

For us, the snares may not be as dramatic as a public trial, yet they can feel just as suffocating. A damaged reputation, a misunderstood action, an illness that alters our plans, financial uncertainty that clouds the future, strained relationships that seem impossible to untangle. In those moments, the temptation is to grasp desperately for control, to fight every whisper, to defend ourselves at all costs.

The psalm invites something deeper. It invites surrender not as defeat, but as trust. To say, “In your hands is my destiny,” is to believe that no humiliation, no injustice, no apparent failure escapes divine providence. It is to believe that even when earthly courts condemn, the faithful God redeems.

St. Joan’s life did not end in visible victory. It ended in flames. Yet her story proclaims that the last word belongs not to the fire, nor to the crowd, nor to the conspirators, but to the God whose hands are stronger than any snare.

When you feel surrounded, when you sense the whispering of opposition or the tightening of circumstances beyond your control, pray Psalm 31 slowly. Let its words become your own. The enemies may set traps, but God remains refuge. The crowd may frighten from every side, but your spirit rests in hands that cannot fail.

“Save me, O Lord, in your kindness.”