I
first started reading the works of Flannery O’Connor
in 1975. A friend at the company I then worked for introduced me to A
Good Man is Hard to Find, and I was hooked. I read all of her fiction; Mystery
and Manners: Occasional Prose; and The
Habit of Being, her letters as collected and compiled by Sally
Fitzgerald.
O’Connor
was a Southern writer, yes, but she transcended the region. She was a literary
writer, and her reputation grew, and grew mightily, after her death from lupus
in 1964.
Her
characters and plots can seem strange when you first start reading, and can be
jarring and disconcerting. But as you read her fiction, you learn that behind
the misfits and charlatans and con-men are the universal themes of grace and
redemption.
Another
odd thing about her writing, and this may very well be what originally pulled
me into it, was that she was a devout Catholic writer writing within (and often
about) a largely Protestant South. For a reader like me, a Protestant raised in
largely Catholic New Orleans, her writing was almost instantly familiar, in
both a specific and a general sense. I knew what it was to feel something of a
misfit in my culture.
O’Connor
prayed, too, and she prayed in accordance with her Catholic faith. In The
Province of Joy: Praying with Flannery O’Connor, author and poet Angela
Alaimo O’Donnell has a created a devotional guide, on that reflects both O’Connor’s
Catholic faith and the themes of her writing.
O’Donnell
structures the book for a full seven-day week, with devotions and prayer for
both morning and evening. Each day has a theme, and the order of the devotional
is far more structured than what might be familiar to most Protestants (and
even some Catholics).
The
main elements for each time of prayer are a gospel meditation; a psalm; a
reading; a quotation from O’Conner’s writings; a canticle or song; the Lord’s
Prayer and a prayer to St. Raphael in the mornings; and a concluding prayer.
The canticles, the Lord’s prayer and the prayer to St. Raphael are repeated
each day, and while it may seem repetitive at first, in practice it is not. It’s
a kind of liturgy that becomes new and different with each day’s theme.
The
evening canticle is the Magnificat of Mary, her song in response to learning from
Gabriel that she would give birth to the Messiah. In this devotion, however,
Mary’s song becomes our song, providing a depth of understanding that I hadn’t
previously encountered, in spite of the number of times I’ve read it.
O’Donnell
provides a solid introduction to O’Connor and her works, and includes a number
of resources (and prayers) in the appendix. The daily readings also include
information for additional consideration and reflection.
I
wasn’t sure what to expect when I began reading it, but The Province of Joy, like the author who inspired it, takes us to a
different, more insightful place in our faith.
Related:
My
review of O’Donnell’s Saint
Sinatra: Poems at TweetSpeak Poetry last year.
The Province of Joy is published by Paraclete Press, which provided a review copy of the book.
The Province of Joy is published by Paraclete Press, which provided a review copy of the book.
