Flannery O’Connor on the Eucharist
November 15, 2009
Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. [Mary McCarthy] said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the ‘most portable’ person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, ‘Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.’ That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.
–From the author’s letter to her anonymous friend “A.”
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This is a classic story, and a great account of both the centrality and the ineffability of the Eucharist.
O’Connor and Gerard Manley Hopkins–two peas in a pod!