Flannery O'Connor: 1925-1964
What
is grace? What do we think of when we hear
that word? People will sometimes say
things like, “By the grace of God I got through that difficulty,” or “Time with
family is my saving grace,” or “It was nice of him to grace us with his
presence.”
St.
Paul will say to the Ephesians, “By
grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is
the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). If grace is that essential for our very
salvation and is something that we encounter on a regular basis, then how vital
we understand it and know how to assimilate it in our lives.
The
Catechism of the Catholic Church explains grace as “favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives
us to respond to his call and to become children of God, partakers of the
divine nature and of eternal life” (CCC, #1996). Grace is an awesome and remarkable reality.
There
are several senses in which the Catechism speaks about grace. Firstly, there is the grace that is a “participation in the life of God” (CCC
#1997). Think about that for a
moment. It is not merely the case that
the grace we receive in Baptism places us in a special relationship with God
(it certainly does that). Nor is it only
the case that, by the grace we receive at Baptism, we have access to this remarkable
life of faith (although we most assuredly do).
In the grace we receive at Baptism we participate in the very LIFE of God!
The
life and love that created the entire world we live in…from nothing…we participate in that life. The life that
redeemed the entire world through self-emptying love; we share in that very life. The life that has the power to raise Jesus
Christ from the dead, and promises to raise again each and every one of us who
believes. We participate and share in that life! Grace is an amazing reality indeed!
The
Catechism goes on to speak also about actual
grace and sacramental grace (CCC,
#2003), specific moments in our everyday lives in which the power of God is at
work to help us “respond to his call and
to become children of God.” Maybe it
will be a moment of temptation in which we know from experience we have failed
in the past; God suddenly provides for us a means and a way to be
faithful. Certainly when we receive our
Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist we are given grace to live
fully in Him and to conform ourselves more completely to His plan for our
lives. When we make a good, integral
confession and seek the mercy of God in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we
receive the grace of forgiveness and the strength necessary to avoid the sins
that cause us sorrow and pain.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux would go
on to say that “All is grace.” Every hot
meal we have on the table, every good relationship that God has brought into
our lives, the beauty that we experience on a daily basis; these gifts from God
are sent to help us grow closer to Him and to each other. Our lives are so very filled with grace.
One of the greatest American
Catholic authors of all time is a woman named Flannery O’Connor. Born in 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, she died far too young at the age of 39 from the devastating disease of lupus. O'Connor once said that all of her
stories were about grace. Now, if you
have never read Flannery O’Connor before, you might be thinking, “How nice.
I should like to buy one of her books and read these nice stories.” Be forewarned! All of Flannery O’Connor’s stories deal with
difficult themes and challenging characters.
Her stories look unflinchingly at such things as racism, discrimination,
hatred and anger. O’Connor’s characters
are often arrogant, self-righteous, narrow minded and even violent.
You might be asking yourself
by now, “What in the world does that have
to do with grace?” To answer that
question we must look at the full quote from Flannery herself:
“All of my stories are about
the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but
most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.”
Grace,
if received well and assimilated into the life of the believer, would have the
power to change and transform our lives and make them truly beautiful. What O’Connor is communicating is that grace,
when rejected and refused, makes us—to use her own word—“grotesque.” We become something God never intended us to
be. When we read one of O’Connor’s
stories we watch a character and are horrified to see the way she despises and
looks down on others; or we watch a man who is on a collision course for
destruction and is doing nothing to avoid it.
We are so moved within at the “grotesque” nature of grace’s rejection
that we determine never to put ourselves in the same situation.
If
we look at the Scriptures that we are given for this weekend we can see similar
stories from the Old Testament and also in the New. In the First Reading, the Prophet Jeremiah
finds himself stuck in the mud, literally.
He is a man who has received the grace of God, and the message of God
for His people; it is not a very positive message.
If you go back just a few verses from the passage we are given this
weekend in Jeremiah 38, the message entrusted to the prophet for the people of
Israel could be summarized thus: You have sinned and failed to keep the
commandments of God. Therefore God has
determined to give you to the Babylonians.
If you humble yourselves, however, and surrender yourselves to them,
although you will be carried away captive He will save you and you will live
(see Jeremiah 38:1-3).
Their
reaction? The princes of the people
approach the king and say:
“Jeremiah ought to be put to death; he is demoralizing the
soldiers who are left in this city, and all the people, by speaking such things
to them; he is not interested in the welfare of our people, but in their ruin.”
—Jeremiah 38:4
The
king looks the other way and allows them to throw Jeremiah in the cistern,
where he would have starved to death if Ebed-melech the Cushite had not rescued
him by the end of that reading. This is
a very ugly scene! They have rejected
the grace and salvation God has offered them.
Instead of embracing Jeremiah with gratitude they brutalize him, to
their own detriment. Historically, it
did not end well for the Israelites in that city. Grace rejected is a grotesque reality indeed.
Similarly, in
the Gospel we hear Jesus’ astounding message:
Do you think that I have come to establish
peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but
rather division.
—Luke
12:51
How
are we to understand this, and from the “Prince of Peace”? What Christ is talking about is the nature of
the Gospel message and the grace that God offers to each of us in His
self-emptying love.
At
the heart of the Gospel proclamation, God essentially reveals that, “all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We are all in desperate need of forgiveness
and God’s mercy. And yet that is
precisely what God has come to bring us in the person of Jesus Christ. He comes to suffer and die on the cross in
self-emptying love in order to grant us a forgiveness we do not deserve, to
make us God’s own adopted children, and bring us into eternal life with God.
Some
hear that message and are overwhelmed with gratitude and filled with love. A tremendous sense of joy enters our hearts when
we realize, despite all our failings and sins, how we are truly loved and
embraced by God. Our hearts are
set on fire with this message of God’s mercy and love. As Christ proclaims so powerfully in the
Gospel this weekend: “I have come to set
the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” (Luke 12:49). We are moved from deep within to go out and
spread that message to all we meet: family, friends, strangers, enemies,
all. We want everyone to know about the
forgiveness now available to us in the person of Jesus Christ.
But
not everyone receives that message. Some,
in fact, are quite offended by it. Forgiveness?
Me? For what! I am fine just the way I am! Like the princes in the reading this weekend in
the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah or the characters in a Flannery O’Connor
story, they reject implicitly that there could be anything at all in their lives in need of correction. Why should they need to receive “favor, the free underserved help that God gives”?
Their
rejection of the grace God offers becomes, instead, resentment toward those who
are trying to share this same message of salvation. Called by God to become something truly
beautiful, they become something God never intends or desires. We are left, then, with what Christ describes
in the Gospel:
From now on a household of five will be divided, three against
two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son
against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law.”
—Luke 12:52-53
It is not the way Christ
wants it, but simply and sadly the way He finds it; grace that has now been replaced
by the “grotesque.”
Here in the Eucharist and
throughout this coming week, grace will enter into our lives and draw us into
a deeper relationship with God. Here and
everywhere throughout these coming days we encounter “favor,
the free and undeserved help that God
gives us to respond to his call and to become children of God, partakers of the
divine nature and of eternal life” (CCC, #1996). As God makes known to us His unconditional
love and mercy, He will also reveal to us places where we need correction,
places we need to grow in our love for God and others, areas we need to be less
self-righteous, more humble, more forgiving.
How might we surrender more
completely to that work of grace in our lives and in our souls so that we can
become truly beautiful, transformed by the merciful love of God, to be the men
and women God has always meant us to be?
