“All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it.”

Flannery O’Connor

            As a student I found a story called “A Good Man is Hard to Find” in an anthology and couldn’t resist the title.  It sums up what this devoted Catholic woman has to say about the gospel of Jesus.  And did she create the most interesting monsters! Perhaps as a Catholic in the deep south of the mid-twentieth century her status as an outsider actually created her keen eye into the souls of her neighbors.

Everything that Rises Must Converge

            In this story Jullian the college-educated son would give anything to see his prejudiced mother taught a lesson regarding her embarrassing beliefs. He gets his wish when she’s clobbered with a purse for giving a black woman’s son a penny. But instead of learning anything she has a stroke.  And instead of celebrating a moral victory, Jullian confronts his own hypocrisy as he “enters the world of guilt and sorrow.”

Revelation

            The main character in this one is Mrs. Turpin, a pretentious and self-absorbed woman who also receives an unexpected answer to her prayers. While in a doctor’s waiting room she infuriates the daughter of a respectable white lady who then tries to strangle her.  What bothers Mrs. Turpin more that the attack is that out of all the misfits in the room, she is the one the girl singled out, telling her, “Go back to Hell where you came from, you old wart hog.”

           When she’s certain no one can hear her, Turpin demands an answer from God, “Why do you send me a message like that? Who do you think you are?” Faithful as He is to answer prayers from the heart, God gives her a vision of all those she considers beneath her being welcomed into heaven with much joy while she and her husband marched behind them, “even their virtues being burned away.”

            Miss O’Connor no longer rates a place on high school reading lists due to political correctness gone awry. But her contribution to the literary cannon as women of faith remains a powerful inspiration.

May your week be full of grace!

Pat Mooney Sweet