Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Flannery O'Connor on the Eucharist

I just found this over at You Are Cephas:

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.

-Flannery O'Connor

1 comment:

Melanie Bettinelli said...

I've heard the quote before: "If it's just a symbol, to hell with it." But never the context. That's interesting.