Citation

Wood RALPHC. Mod. Theolog. 2008; 24(3): 387-411.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1468-0025.2008.00464.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

As the only orthodox Christian writer the American nation has yet produced, Flannery O’Connor created a remarkable body of fiction rooted in a profoundly sacramental theology. The depth of O’Connor's sacramentalism has recently been revealed with the opening of her remarkable letters to Elizabeth Hester, her most important epistolary friend. Their eleven-year correspondence centers upon two inseparable matters: conversion and suffering. The aim of this essay is to explore how the gift (or refusal) of faith comes through the embrace (or rejection) of a participation in God's own life through a life of sacramental suffering.