Flannery O’Connor’s Lenten Life and Work | Church Life Journal

Lent is probably the most somber season of the Christian 12 months. It marks the forty days previous to Easter (excluding Sundays), because it additionally commemorates Jesus’s forty days within the desert, the place he confronts and refuses the temptations of Devil. It additionally harkens again to Israel’s forty years of faithless wandering within the wilderness. “Lent” is a shortening of the phrase “lengthen,” because it notes the time when the times change into longer throughout spring.

Flannery O’Connor’s days weren’t lengthened however shortened, as she spent her remaining dozen years dying from the lupus she had inherited from her father, lastly succumbing at age thirty-nine. “Loss of life is a very powerful place that life provides a Christian,” she declared. In demise, (she added) we return our lives to God with empty palms, like the person within the parable who buried his cash somewhat than make investments it; or else with our presents realized and multiplied in love of each God and neighbor.

I contend that Flannery O’Connor’s life and work embodied all three of the Lenten necessities: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Since 25 March 2025 just isn’t solely the Feast of the Annunciation, but in addition O’Connor’s exact centenary, it’s applicable that we should always meditate on these parts in her writing.

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Although she mentioned Prime and Compline (Morning and Night prayer) out of her Missal, she confessed that her coronary heart by no means “panted for the Lord,” even when the Psalmist’s did (42:1). Neither did she parade her piety. “I’m not a mystic,” she confessed, “and I don’t lead a holy life.” She additionally admitted, maybe to the shock of her fellow Christians, that perception is way more tough than unbelief, because the energy of evil is so evident. She ruefully opined that, so far as she might inform, her prayers bounced off the ceiling. “However that don’t cease me from praying them,” she added. Such sardonic self-deflation was a certain guard in opposition to any soft-core religion. Sentimentality is to Christianity, she declared, as pornography is to artwork—a fast arousal of simple emotions and a fair swifter satisfaction of them.

Her Prayer Journal, recorded as a younger graduate scholar on the College of Iowa, is something however sentimental. She candidly beseeches God to spare her from mediocrity. She prays above all for mastery of her craft, in order that her Christian imaginative and prescient and her creative work would possibly represent a seamless entire. As she typically declared in her essays and lectures, any division between kind and matter is a defilement of each. And in her case, their inseparability was made all of the extra strenuous as a result of she sought to write down, not merely concerning the pure but in addition the supernatural, or somewhat concerning the pure as it’s correctly supernaturalized—i.e., about life when perceived “down underneath issues . . . the place You might be.”

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There are numerous different types of fasting than abstinence from meals, in fact. Although O’Connor’s bodily struggling should have been extreme, she by no means complained, bearing it with exceptional persistence and humor. When requested whether or not her crippling sickness affected her writing, she drily answered, “No, since for that I take advantage of my palms somewhat than my toes.” Within the deepest sense, the essential years of her life have been an prolonged quick, as she practiced continuous renunciation and forbearance, in methods typically identified solely to herself. “I’ve by no means been anyplace however sick. In a way illness is a spot, extra instructive than an extended journey to Europe, and it’s all the time a spot the place there isn’t any firm, the place no one can observe. Illness earlier than demise is a really applicable factor and I feel those that don’t have it miss one in every of God’s mercies.”

Even so, there have been limits to such compelled self-abnegation. “I’m sick of being sick,” she remarks in a late letter. “Pray that the lupus don’t end me off too fast,” she wrote to a pal. Figuring out that her good profession would come to an early finish—leaving a lot of its promise maybe unfulfilled—she remained unflinchingly candid concerning the hyperlink between doubt and religion: “I can with one eye squinted take all of it as a blessing.”

O’Connor fasted from meat on Fridays, however, in fact, she by no means fasted from the Eucharist in any respect. She acquired it each morning when potential, typically returning together with her mom to their Milledgeville parish church for the late-afternoon service of Benediction. At a New York banquet hosted by Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick in 1949, the ex-Catholic author Mary McCarthy declared that she nonetheless discovered the Eucharist to be a helpful image for her fiction, although in fact she might not imagine any of its hocus-pocus: “Properly,” declared the typically reticent O’Connor—absolutely to the astonishment of the opposite company—“if it’s a logo, to hell with it.”

In recounting this celebrated incident six years later, O’Connor made clear that she was not indulging in sanctimony: “That was all of the protection I used to be able to however I notice now that that is all I’ll ever be capable to say about [the Eucharist] exterior of a narrative, besides that it’s the middle of existence for me; all the remainder of life is expendable.”[1]

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Flannery O’Connor lamented her scarcity in almsgiving—i.e., in corporal works of mercy. She was in no bodily situation to carry out them, confined as she was to crutches and unable to drive. Nor did she have the financial means for doing so. Her mom operated a profitable 550-acre dairy farm, not as a pastime, however as a result of the O’Connors wanted the earnings.

Flannery went on the lecture circuit to appropriate the early misprision of her work because the sensible satire of a cultured Catholic in opposition to silly Protestant fundamentalists, when actually their sweated and Bible-drenched Christianity made them her companions within the Religion. But, she additionally undertook these onerous labors to obtain the precious honoraria. After profitable an $8,000 Ford Basis grant in 1959, she wryly noticed that she supposed to dwell ten years on that sum, however in fact lasted solely 5. It was not lengthy sufficient for her to repeat the munificent royalties that accrued from the sale of her books. And in a letter to a pal written simply six months earlier than her demise, she declared, “I by no means purchased the report participant. I saved up the cash after which I assumed that is some huge cash to spend for one thing you don’t already recognize and no assure that you simply ever will, so I ordered me a pair of swans as an alternative.”

O’Connor greater than atoned for her scarcity in corporal works of mercy by abundantly performing their non secular equivalents. The Behavior of Being, her collected letters, options an unexampled outpouring of charity provided to all types and situations of her fellow people. An important and prolonged exchanges are with Elizabeth Hester, whose first letter introduced that she herself was an atheist and accused O’Connor of being a fascist. Slightly than turning away in wrath and scorn, Flannery opened herself to an clearly indignant and depressing girl. Betty regularly revealed herself to be a lesbian who had been dishonorably discharged from the Air Power due to her brazenly practiced sexuality.

This meant that she might by no means discover employment worthy of her good thoughts. As a substitute, she toiled away within the tedious work of a retail credit score workplace—whereas additionally corresponding with Iris Murdoch, the distinguished British novelist and thinker. Not as soon as does O’Connor chide Hester for her sexual preferences. Nor does she urge Hester to undertake a battle that she herself has not identified. She asks Hester, as an alternative, to not be imprisoned by her “historical past,” neither to be outlined nor confined by her sexuality. Flannery challenges Betty to reorder her libidinous wishes to the love of God, thereby redeeming and reworking them. Below Flannery’s sponsorship, Betty was acquired into the Church. Alas, her conversion didn’t final. She lapsed after 5 years.

But, O’Connor remained Betty’s candid companion in a friendship that ended solely with Flannery’s demise:

I don’t know something that might grieve us right here like this information. I do know that what you do since you suppose it’s proper. I don’t suppose any the much less of you exterior the Church than in it, however what’s painful is the belief that this implies a narrowing of life for you and a lessening of the will for all times. Religion is a present, however the will has an excellent deal to do with it. The lack of it’s mainly a failure of urge for food, assisted by sterile mind. However let me let you know this: religion comes and goes. It rises and falls just like the tides of an invisible ocean. Whether it is presumptuous to suppose that religion will stick with you eternally, it’s simply as presumptuous to suppose that unbelief will [also stay forever]. Leaving the Church just isn’t the answer.[2]

It’s essential additionally to notice that O’Connor didn’t confine her non secular works of mercy to providing sensible private counsel in her voluminous correspondence; she additionally made profound theological pronouncements as effectively. If O’Connor is ever raised to the altars as a saint and physician of the Church, it is going to occur, at the very least partly, due to such profundities as this:

For me it’s the virgin beginning, the Incarnation, the resurrection that are the true legal guidelines of the flesh and the bodily. Loss of life, decay, destruction are the suspension of those legal guidelines. I’m all the time astonished on the emphasis the Church places on the physique. It’s not the soul she says that may rise however the physique, glorified.

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Flannery O’Connor’s Lenten issues are discovered all through her fiction, maybe most notably in “The River,” her deepest and most tough story. It issues Harry Ashfield, the 4 or five-year outdated son of party-going, party-giving dad and mom. They’re city sophisticates at whose home, as Harry has discovered, all the pieces is a joke. He can even get new toys by breaking his outdated ones. Harry has all the pieces, Harry has nothing—on this non secular ashfield, this barren wasteland limned so memorably in T. S. Eliot’s poem.

Harry’s sudden deliverance from this secular hell comes by the use of a countrified caregiver, Mrs. Connin. Whereas his dad and mom are sleeping off their hangovers, she takes the boy day by day to her rural residence. On one event, she takes him to listen to the Bevel Summers. As a preacher in his late teenagers, Summers has no pulpit of his personal. He pronounces the Gospel whereas standing in a shallow stream, beckoning to all who will hear and heed his proclamation. Baptism for him is not any affirmation of 1’s particular person promise to observe Jesus. Although untutored in sacramental theology, he has a sacramental regard for baptism because the outward and visual act that initiates believers into demise and burial with Christ, as they then stand up out of their watery grave to drastic newness of life.

As one who additionally has the present of therapeutic, Summers worries that his viewers could have come both to witness or even perhaps to obtain a sensational remedy. He guarantees no such miraculous aid. He provides an unspectacular therapeutic as an alternative—i.e., a metamorphosis that makes witness to the Gospel: “For those who ain’t come for Jesus, you ain’t come for me. For those who simply come to see can you allow your ache within the river, you ain’t come for Jesus . . . I by no means informed no one that.” Summers the boy preacher thus makes clear that there are two sorts of ache and two types of rivers, each non secular and bodily:

Then he lifted his head and arms and shouted. “Hearken to what I received to say, you folks! There ain’t however one river and that’s the River of Life, made out of Jesus’ Blood. That’s the river it’s a must to lay your ache in, within the River of Religion, within the River of Life, within the River of Love, within the wealthy pink river of Jesus’ Blood, you folks!”

His voice grew tender and musical. “All of the rivers come from that one River and return to it prefer it was the ocean sea and for those who imagine, you’ll be able to lay your ache in that River and eliminate it as a result of that’s the River that was made to hold sin. It’s a River filled with ache itself, ache itself, shifting towards the Kingdom of Christ, to be washed away, sluggish, you folks, sluggish as this right here outdated pink river water spherical my toes.”[3]

Although he lacks formal theological coaching, Bevel Summers has saturated his theological creativeness within the doctrine of Substitutionary Atonement. Although topic to gross abuse, it’s rightly understood as measuring the price of divine forgiveness—each the associated fee to Christ and the associated fee to his disciples. Notice effectively that the river evangelist doesn’t name for an instantaneous, once-for-all conversion to a budget grace denounced by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Grace with out worth; grace with out price! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid upfront; and, as a result of it has been paid, all the pieces may be had for nothing. Because the price was infinite, the probabilities of utilizing and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it weren’t low-cost?

Grace alone does all the pieces, they are saying, and so all the pieces can stay because it was earlier than. As a substitute of following Christ, let the Christian benefit from the consolations of grace! That’s what we imply by low-cost grace, the grace which quantities to the justification of sin with out the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Low cost grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.[4]

Like Bonhoeffer, Bevel Summers summons his flock to pricey grace—to the exhausting, sluggish, muddy battle of day by day reconversion to the lifetime of radical discipleship.

At first, younger Harry resists in a smart-alecky method. He imitates his pagan dad and mom by mocking Summers, declaring that he too is called Bevel. The river-preacher just isn’t deterred, and the boy quickly acknowledges that this isn’t a joke. “If I Baptize you,” Summers declares, “you’ll be capable to go to the Kingdom of Christ. You’ll be washed within the river of struggling, son, and also you’ll go by the deep river of life.” Figuring out that baptism all the time requires consent, he then asks, “Would you like that?” “Sure,” the kid mentioned, and thought, I gained’t return to the condominium once more. I’ll go underneath the river.”

Plunging Harry head-first beneath the water and announcing the baptismal system, Summers seems sternly on the gasping little one as he emerges: “You depend now. You didn’t even depend earlier than.” Although he’s a mere little one, little Harry is aware of what it means to “depend,” if solely as a result of he by no means counted—by no means actually mattered—to his dad and mom. He was a nothing. And so when he returns residence, he makes his first evangelical witness, muttering to his uncomprehending mom: “I’m not the identical now, I depend.” Harry additionally causes, in literalist child-like vogue, that if he issues a lot for staying underneath the water so briefly, he might matter completely if he stayed underneath the river completely. And so, within the story’s riveting remaining scene, he heads for the river.

This scene is usually misinterpreted as a tragic suicide. Precisely on the contrary, it is without doubt one of the happiest endings in all of O’Connor’s fiction. Younger Harry will get precisely what he’s searching for: a complete immersion within the demise—and thus within the life—of Christ. But it doesn’t come simply. For an ominous determine with a misleading title, Mr. Paradise, follows the boy to the river. Just like the Lucifer who was forged from heaven, this man is a rapist of souls, a manifest pedophile. He’s waving a big striped sweet cane, hoping to lure Harry out of the river and into his clutches. O’Connor just isn’t averse to phallic photos.

At first, Harry is dissatisfied that the river appears to reject him, not understanding that the pure buoyancy of the physique retains him afloat. He lastly succeeds—because the satan unwittingly serves to allow God’s work—when he sees Mr. Paradise shouting, shaking his sweet membership, coming after him:

This time, the ready present caught him like an extended mild hand and pulled him swiftly ahead and down. For an instantaneous, he was overcome with shock; then since he was shifting rapidly and knew that he was getting someplace, all his fury and worry left him.

“Excellent love casts out all worry” (1 John 4:18) not solely describes Harry Ashfield’s demise; it additionally summarizes the life and work of Flannery O’Connor. Prompted by a fearless love of God, she by no means uncared for the Lenten lifetime of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.