Abbess of Andalusia

V. Murray Lorraine

Description

Flannery O'Connor has been studied and lauded under many labels: the Southern author whose pen captured the soul of a proud region struggling to emerge out of racism and poverty, the female writer whose independent spirit and tragically short life inspired a generation of women, the Catholic artist whose fiction evokes themes of sin and damnation, mercy and redemption. Now, and for the first time, The Abbess of Andalusia affords us an in-depth look at Flannery O'Connor the believer. In these pages you will come to know Flannery O'Connor not only as a writer and an icon, but as a theologian and apologist; as a spiritual director and a student of prayer; as a suffering soul who learned obedience and merited grace through infirmity; and truly, as the Abbess of her own small, but significant, spiritual house. For decades Flannery O'Connor the author has touched her readers with the brilliance of her books. Now be edified and inspired by the example of her life. New from Saint Benedict Press.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian theology
• History of religions
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: St. Benedict Press LLC
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781935302995
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Abbess of Andalusia
F LANNERY O C ONNOR S S PIRITUAL J OURNEY
The Abbess of Andalusia
F LANNERY O C ONNOR S S PIRITUAL J OURNEY
By Lorraine V. Murray
Copyright notices
The Mary Flannery O Connor Charitable Trust granted permission to Lorraine V. Murray to use the following in this book:
Excerpts from: twenty letters written by Flannery O Connor to Betty Hester, ten letters written by Flannery O Connor to Father J.H. McCown, four letters written by Flannery O Connor to the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, and one reference to Flannery O Connor s Last Will and Testament.
Copyright 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964 by Flannery O Connor; Copyright renewed 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, and 1992 by Regina Cline O Connor. This permission is non-exclusive, one-time use only, in the English language in North America. All rights reserved.
Excerpts from The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O Connor, edited by Sally Fitzgerald, copyright 1979 by Regina O Connor, reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, LLC.
To Monsignor Richard J. Lopez and the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne
And in memory of Mary Ann Long
N ow Flannery is dead and I will write her name with honor, with love for the great slashing innocence of that dry-eyed irony that could keep looking at the South in the face without bleeding or even sobbing.
-Thomas Merton
C ONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Preface: by Joseph Pearce
Introduction: Afternoon at Andalusia
I. Her Interior Life
1. The Province of Joy:
Angels, Demons, and Daily Prayers
2. The Little Way at Andalusia:
Devotion to the Saints
II. Spiritual Director by Mail
3. Adopted Kin:
The Tragic Journey of Betty Hester
4. Escape from Nihilism:
The Sagas of Alfred Corn and Roslyn Barnes
III. A Ministry of Writing
5. A Genuine Miracle :
Memoir of Mary Ann
6. Tempering the Wind to the Lamb:
Mentoring Other Writers
7. Mortification of the Mind:
Writing for the Cathlick Press
IV. Conversion of Heart
8. Genius and Much Grace:
The Priests in Flannery s Life
9. Integrated and Lapped with Azaleas:
Overcoming Racism
V. The Action of Grace
10. A Reluctant Pilgrim:
The Journey to Lourdes
11. Genuine Works of the Lord:
Andalusia s Birds and Beasts
12. Grace in Suffering:
The Cross of Lupus
Appendix: Prayer to St. Raphael
About the Author
Bibliography
Notes
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
T he idea for this book was born the moment that Monsignor Richard Lopez, my dear friend, turned to me one afternoon, as we sat sipping wine on the back porch, and inquired: Have you ever read Flannery s letters? His devotion and admiration for Flannery O Connor kept me going over the next few years, as I read not only the letters, but a mountain of research material. He has my deepest gratitude.
I am also very grateful to Todd Aglialoro of Saint Benedict Press for his astute insights and superb editorial work on the manuscript.
Also high on my thank-you list are Ben Camardi of the Mary Flannery O Connor Charitable Trust for kindly granting me permission to quote from Flannery s unpublished letters; Craig Amason, executive director of Andalusia and the Flannery O Connor-Andalusia Foundation, for giving my husband and me a tour of Andalusia, and then answering my numerous questions via e-mail; and Joseph Pearce and Paul Thigpen, who gave me excellent guidance on an earlier draft of the book.
Along the way, I have made some new e-mail friends, and one is Bill Sessions, who knew Flannery and her mother very well, and was always gracious about replying to my questions. There were also folks in the Flannery O Connor Society who encouraged me, especially Avis Hewitt, Bruce Gentry, Robert Donahoo, and Susan Presley.
A number of priests, sisters, and brothers came to my rescue, and I can never repay their kindnesses. They include the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, especially Mother Ann Marie at the Rosary Hill Home in Hawthorne, N.Y., who wrote a lovely letter containing memories about Sister Evangelist, and Sister Mary De Paul, who sent me letters from the archives.
Father Edward J. Romagosa wrote me a letter about his memories of Flannery, while Brother Chaminade Crabtree and Father Luke Kot at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers sent information about Flannery and her peacocks. My cousin Father Christopher Viscardi helped me locate materials in the Jesuit house in Spring Hill, Alabama.
Librarians are the unsung angels that make many books possible, and this one is no exception. My appreciation goes to: Nancy Davis Bray in the Special Collections Room at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville for helping me get information about Flannery s prayer book; Joan E. Gaulene at the New Orleans Province Jesuit Archives in the Monroe Library at Loyola University, for her help with a cache of letters to Father Youree Watson; Michael Carter at the Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for assistance in locating the laughing Madonna and Christ Child image.
I also thank Stephen Enniss, Naomi Nelson, Kathy Shoemaker, and Teresa Burk at the Manuscripts,Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University for their assistance with Flannery s unpublished letters to Betty Hester; Janie Morris and David Strader at the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University for help obtaining copies of unpublished letters to Father McCown; and Tracy Powell and Pat Ziebart at the Pitts Theology Library at Emory University for cheerfully helping me find magazine articles.
Special thanks go to the interlibrary loan specialist in the Pitts Theology Library - my husband, Jef Murray - for getting me a copy of the exact edition of the prayer book that Flannery used. He also made excellent suggestions on an early draft, fed me delicious meals and homemade wine, and encouraged me when the footnotes threatened to overwhelm me.
I also very much appreciate Dr. M. Patrick Graham, director of the Pitts Theology Library, for approving the purchase of books necessary for my research, and Dr. John Weaver and my other colleagues for their interest in the project.
I thank everyone who prayed for me as I wrote this book, especially my sister and brother-in-law, Rosemary and Dick Mende, my nieces, Christina Edgar and Jennifer Metcalf, my nephew, Rick Mende, my aunt, Rita Pope, my best friend, Pam Mottram, and my cousin Julie Anderson. I m also grateful for prayers offered by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, the brothers at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, Mary Anne Castranio and Gretchen Keiser at The Georgia Bulletin, and my faith community at St. Thomas More Church in Decatur, Georgia.
P REFACE
O ne of the most memorable characters to emerge from the gargoylesque pen of Flannery O Connor is The Misfit in A Good Man Is Hard to Find. He is savagely psychopathic and yet, at the same time, savagely sane. I call myself The Misfit, he said, because I can t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment. In perceiving himself as a hapless victim of injustice, he appears to be a kindred spirit with that other madman, King Lear, who declared himself a man more sinn d against than sinning.
The problem with which The Misfit struggles, in his case unsuccessfully, is the conundrum at the heart of life itself. Why do we suffer, and are we more sinned against than sinning? This was the conundrum at the very crux of G.K. Chesterton s novel The Man Who Was Thursday, which explores the mind s quest for meaning in the face of seemingly meaningless suffering. At the novel s end, the mysterious figure of Sunday emerges as a figure of the Divine, accused of inflicting so much apparently senseless pain. He is asked, Have you ever suffered? to which he replies with the words of Christ: Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?
Although Sunday answers the question with another question, his question is the answer. It is the suffering of God Himself that makes sense of all suffering, and it is through Christ s suffering that Christians find meaning and purpose in their own. This axiomatic truth is at the sacred heart of the Christian s acceptance of suffering, an acceptance which Chesterton s friend, Maurice Baring, conveyed with sublime eloquence through the words of a character in Darby and Joan , the final novel he wrote before his own slow and painful death from Parkinson s disease:
One has to accept sorrow for it to be of any healing power, and that is the most difficult thing in the world . . . A Priest once said to me, When you understand what accepted sorrow means, you will understand everything. It is the secret of life. 1
This secret of life had been discovered by Fyodor Dostoevsky, who believed that his life had been positively transformed by his sufferings as a prisoner: It was a good school. It strengthened my faith and awakened my love for those who bear all their suffering with patience. 2 Dostoevsky s great literary compatriot, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, underwent a similar transformation through his experience in the Gulag and, most particularly, through his near-death experience with cancer. By any stretch of the imagination, Solzhenitsyn s real-life experience of suffering at the hands of unjust jailers eclipses any injustice that we can imagine was suffered by The Misfit, yet, unlike The Misfit, Solzhenitsyn not only accepted his suffering but was grateful for its healing qualities.
Years go by, yes, Solzhenitsyn wrote to his wife from Ekibastuz labor camp, but if the heart grows warmer from the misfortunes suffered, if it is cleansed therein - the years are not going by in vain. 3
The paradox is that suffering is not meaningless, as is claimed by Chesterton s satanic accuser and the manically rational Misfit, but that, on the contrary, it uncovers the secret at the heart of life. Far from being senseless, it actually makes sense of ourselves and our place in the cosmos. It is