The Action of Grace in Territory Largely Held by Physicists
The second floor west sacristy was not meant as a stop on this tour of St. Mary of the Visitation Parish, the oldest parish in Iowa City, Iowa. At mention of how the pastor slept up there before the rectory’s completion, however, there was a request to see it. “The steps are tricky but as long as we’re careful I suppose it's fine. It’s just used for storage now, but you really want to see it?”
They did, this Flannery O'Connor reading group from the Newman Center a block away. Their membership was composed of young professionals and graduate students from a variety of disciplines studying at the University of Iowa, skewed surprisingly hard toward physicists. I'd tentatively planned their readings for the next few months and we began our first session with a tour of my parish, Flannery's home away from home during her time in the Writers' Workshop. For most of these students it was their first encounter with Flannery O’Connor.
Truthfully, I'm not sure how many of them joined because of any genuine interest in her. I think they were just looking for something to do, somewhere to be.
We walked up steps so steep and shallow there was scarcely room to plant our toes on them. This first flight led through a narrow door and angled right into a second flight, opening to a high ceiling. Western facing windows, milky glass replacing the lower missing patterned panels, were dark for the night, but light from the sacristy’s lone incandescent bulb danced off enormous gold organza ribbons trimming wreaths hung along the northern wall on nails. Tall shelves along the southern wall's white plaster held a wild array of objects: large hewn sections of salvaged cornice, a number of disproportionately sized baby Jesuses dwarfing all manor of magi and livestock, and statuary we could not identify despite the figures' unique headwear. I told them the history of what I could, we wondered together about what I didn’t have a story for. It was, by far, the least beautiful part of the church, but the part to which they were most drawn.
The purpose of our tour became lost in facts I found myself trailing off about, like how the old altar rail is stored in the basement. “Can we see it? How do we get down there?” I offered to take them along the “secret stairs,” less treacherous than those leading to the second floor sacristy, but that likely meant encountering more bats than we already had that evening. This didn’t dissuade them. There was little to nothing about most items in storage relating to Flannery O'Connor's time at St. Mary's besides the altar rail, except perhaps the old baptismal font languishing in the dimly lit upper east sacristy, where mustard colored walls disconcertingly crack ever more and more. The font, featuring a statuette of John the Baptist with shell in hand pouring water over a kneeling Christ, stood alongside forgotten vestments of rich brocade and ornate embroidery hanging zipped in garment bags. We unzipped them.
Before beginning that evening, I wondered if I’d be able to stretch things into forty five minutes. We were easily filling two hours.
It wasn't until we reached the choir loft, the last point on our tour, that I realized I hadn't said a word about her, about Flannery O'Connor. I leaned against the balcony's low wall with my back to the group as they continued to explore the legendary organ, a statue of St. Therese in a hidden corner where people often left roses (I didn’t discover this until I'd been a parishioner for years), and a replica image of Our Lady of Guadalupe from St. Juan Diego’s tilma on the backmost wall of the church.
I counted pews from the front, looking for the fifth along the east wall, St. Joseph’s side. His statue stands in a gothic altar, lily-staff blooming in hand. Spires above him stretch nearly three stories high and a banner held by angels bears the words Ite ad Joseph over his head. He's flanked by St. Aloysius Gonzaga on the left and St. Anthony on the right. Beneath him, two scenes are portrayed from Joseph’s life with Christ: on the left, Jesus on Mary's lap as Joseph holds forth an ax for him to see; on the right, Jesus' hand extended in blessing over Joseph as he lay dying, Mary at his side. These are the statues and images that were directly before Flannery O’Connor daily, if O’Connor apocrypha is true, and this is where she sat.
Statue of St. Aloyisius Gonzaga, St. Mary of the Visitation Parish, Iowa City, Iowa. Photo courtesy Ruth Thomas.
I made something of a vow never to write about her, and I suppose this breaks it. What is there to write about Flannery O’Connor that hasn't already been written by people better qualified than me in any number of ways? And this group, what do I have to say to them about her, why did I suggest her short stories for a group eager to find other young adult Catholics in the same life circumstances? Why not stick with “Theology on Tap,” or “Coffee and Catechism?”
Because they are far from home and struggling to grow deeper in their faith and stronger in their vocations, because this is where she did the same thing this group is seeking to do.
All I could think to say, turning away from St. Joseph’s altar and facing them, gathering them up to say it's finally time to leave because it was so late and I was so very tired, is what she said herself: her stories are about “the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.”
“This is what it means to live out your faith in Christ,” I told them. “It’s hard, it’s violent,” I said, gesturing toward the statues lining the church walls’ entire length from choir loft to sanctuary: each of the twelve Apostles, holding the instruments of their martyrdom. I meant it both of the Apostles and Flannery O’Connor’s writing.
All of this, all of this was enough for our first night.
At Mass in St. Mary's that Sunday after our tour, the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, the prayer after Communion wounded me.
Graciously raise up, O Lord,
those you renew with this Sacrament,
that we may come to possess your redemption
both in mystery and in the manner of our life.
Through Christ our Lord.
Mystery and manner.
Our meetings since the tour begin with me dropping a pile of books in the center of our table, containing her own words both about her writing and so much more. After reading some of them over and over for decades, such as The Habit of Being and Mystery and Manners, or more recently The Presence of Grace, her Prayer Journal, and Good Things Out of Nazareth, it's easy to pick one up and thumb through pages finding passages that speak directly to this group’s questions, from the stories we are reading, the craft of writing, the philosophy of art, to the truth of Catholicism. She speaks to them in her own words, and I try harder to keep my vow.
Our next outing is City Park. I'll take them to the remnants of the animal enclosures once fall morning frosts kill off overgrowth, making the concrete slabs easier to find. We'll follow paths Flannery walked when she frequented this park that operated as a zoo during her time in Iowa City, that the character Enoch Emery led Haze Motes along in her first novel, Wise Blood. We’ll have a picnic and climb the hill to the pool, empty and silent for the season. Maybe we'll hide in bushes. Their assigned reading for that week is “The Heart of the Park.”
This post was inspired by Pete Burak's Talk “The Young Adult Ministry Death Cycle” in the OSV Talks series, a series of topics from prominent Catholic leaders to spark discussion, explore new or re-explore old approaches, and inspire creative thinking, all from the heart of the Church.
