Welcome to The House of New Bethany!
Happy the man who meditates on wisdom and reflects on knowledge.
She will nourish him with the bread of understanding and give him the water of learning to drink.
He will lean upon her and not fall; he will trust in her and not be put to shame.
She will exalt him above his fellows; in the assembly she will make him eloquent.
Joy and gladness he will find, an everlasting name inherit.
~ Canticle of Sirach 14:20; 15:3-6
What is The House of New Bethany?
The House of New Bethany is a story. Its inception was an interior encounter with St. Joan of Arc. Through her, I received a gift of grace requiring years of prayer and study to bring to fruition.
The story began with a set of four poetic prose written in the Fall of 2008. I saw myself called from a Dark Forest into the sunlight of a beautiful meadow by St. Thérèse of Lisieux and a troupe of friends. St. Joan of Arc was one of those friends. Together, Joan and Thérèse led me on “the Trail of the Dogmatic Creed” toward the mystical kingdom of France I barely perceived on my noetic horizon. Soon after, I learned that St. Mary Magdalene spent her last thirty years in Provence, a place destined to be absorbed into the earthly kingdom of France. Magdalene’s place in France’s history had a deep and lasting impact on me, especially considering my mystical journey with St. Joan and St. Thérèse.
In 2013 I venerated the shin bone of St. Mary Magdalene during her relic tour to the United States. A few months afterward, a woman I knew was Magdalene appeared to me in a dream. I began to connect her to the mystical kingdom of St. Joan and St. Thérèse. Magdalene on the shores of Provence embodied the shimmering spiritual form of the barely perceived kingdom now emerging on my horizon of meaning in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
With Magdalene as the gestalt expression of my destination in what I came to call “Mystical France,” St. Joan and St. Thérèse led me on an epic journey to my true homeland. Mystical France is the kingdom of The House of New Bethany, a holy Catholic royal line bequeathed by Christ to Mary Magdalene at the foot of the Cross and the tomb of the Resurrection.
What do I hope for you in The House of New Bethany?
I hope you will read and contemplate this story. I share it that others might begin their journey with St. Joan and St. Thérèse to Magdalene’s Mystical France in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The Principle of The House of New Bethany is Love
The underlying principle of The House of New Bethany is love, love of God and His Holy Roman Catholic Church as Christ’s mystical body. The correlated principle is exclusivity. To journey with St. Joan and St. Thérèse to Magdalene’s Mystical France, one must make a dogmatic profession of the Catholic Faith and grow in the virtues of humility and purity through the spiritual guidance of the saints. One must be totally consecrated to the Blessed Virgin Mary with no concern for oneself, only for the reign of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Mary Magdalene as the Gestalt of Mystical France
Mary Magdalene in Provence is the gestalt of Mystical France. Our union with her in this royal line is defined as an empathic sharing in and noematic comprehension of her given experience.[1] It is through a union of hearts, through a union of phenomenological awareness, that we are born into the royal line bequeathed to her by Our Lord at the foot of the Cross and the tomb of the Resurrection. It is a union of hearts with Sts. Mary Magdalene, Joan of Arc, and Thérèse of Lisieux initiated and manifested through grace alone.
St. Joan of Arc, through the hermeneutics of St. Thérèse, is our embodied point of entry on The Trail of the Dogmatic Creed. It is through St. Joan that all the possibilities of the journey are present. Investigating these possibilities with intentionality by elevating our relationship with her in our hierarchy of values, we develop a line of insight through the syntax of St. Mary Magdalene’s guidance and the movement of the Holy Spirit in sharing this grace with us for the glory of Jesus Christ and the honor of His Mother, Our Lady the Virgin Mary. This line of insight is analogous to following Joan of Arc on a trail guided by soft lights in the still, dark night of faith. From this line of insight, we make logical inferences in an agility of mind that brings the constituent meanings together into a Gestalt expression.
Join The House of New Bethany and, with the guidance of St. Joan and St. Thérèse, discover the lines of Magdalenian insight bequeathed to you by Our Lord and Our Lady for the glory of God and the love of His Holy Catholic Church.
[1] Burns, “The Curious Case of Collective Experience: Edith Stein’s Phenomenology of Communal Experience and a Spanish Fire-Walking Ritual,” 10, 12. “There is a single noematic sense to the experience that is shared between us.” “She (Stein) attempts to walk the line that asserts the reality of the community’s stream of experiences while denying the existence of a communal stream of consciousness.”
About Walter Emerson Adams
My writings are personal reflections on my spiritual journey through the Catholic Church.
I hold an undergraduate degree in Economics from Princeton University and a master’s degree in Public and Private Management from Yale University.
I am married and the father of one child. Though raised a Methodist in the Bible Belt and surrounded by evangelicalism as a youth, I converted to the Catholic Church prior to my marriage in 1985.
Touched deeply by the life of St. Thérèse of Lisieux and imbued with a filial love for Mary, I set out on a life-long spiritual journey to "seek first" Christ's Kingdom with Thérèse as my guide.
Eventually led to confront my innermost being on that lonely, mystical hill of Calvary; I discovered through Mary's maternal guidance and Thérèse's sisterly care that Jesus had called another mighty saint to walk with me and to protect me through that dark and awful night of self-confrontation that leads us in Christ to true freedom. That saint, a spiritual sister to Thérèse, was Joan of Arc.
Read more about me at my sister Substack, The Dove and Rose. Everything here is free. If you would like to support my work, you can upgrade to a paid subscriber or visit my support site through the link in the menu above.
May St. Joan, St. Thérèse, St. Mary Magdalene, and the Blessed Virgin Mary pray for you always!
~ Walter Emerson Adams
