Flannery, Via Julie – UPDATE

I recently wrote elsewhere that Happy Catholic is run by a woman who seems to breathe in books and art and who has has a remarkable capacity for zeroing in on one sentence and bringing it to the fore, for the benefit of many.

I stop in at Julie’s every day, even just for a peek, because I know there will be something there to help me breathe through the day.

Like this bit of Flannery O’ Connor–something I’d read before, but needed to read again:

… All your dissatisfaction with the Church seems to me to come from an incomplete understanding of’ sin. … what you seem actually to demand is that the Church put the kingdom of heaven on earth right here now, that the Holy Ghost be translated at once into all flesh. The Holy Spirit very rarely shows Himself on the surface of anything. You are asking that man return at once to the state God created him in, you are leaving out the terrible radical human pride that causes death. Christ was crucified on earth and the Church is crucified in time. … The Church is founded on Peter who denied Christ three times and couldn’t walk on the water by himself. You are expecting his successors to walk on the water. All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. Priests resist it as well as others. To have the Church be what you want it to be would require the continuous miraculous meddling of God in human affairs …
–Flannery O’Connor, from one of her letters

No one reads enough O’Connor, and reading Flannery, even in small doses makes one a better writer and a better thinker. Thanks, Julie.

Flannery and Peacocks, shamelessly cribbed from here