On Flannery O’Connor’s Centenary

How appropriate that Flannery O’Connor should have been born on the Solemnity of the Annunciation: the liturgical feast celebrating the willing acceptance of a God-given vocation. As we marked Miss O’Connor’s centenary three months ago — and yes, boys and girls, it was Miss O’Connor, as no one would have been more repelled by the neologism Ms. — that’s the dimension of her life that struck me most powerfully: her embrace of the challenging vocation of writing, shaped in her case by the vocation of suffering.