A CLO SE R LO O K
Dying Every Minute of Our Lives Death is a central motif in Christianity. In Catholic moral and spiritual reflection, death has a more dominant place than it does in most other forms of Christian theology. Indeed, some forms of American evangelicalism minimize – or even practically ignore – Christ’s crucifixion, rushing straight to His resurrection. This partly explains why most non-Catholic traditions removed the corpus from the crucifix, displaying an empty cross in their churches. “We worship a risen Christ, not a dead one” is the typical protestant rationale. It is a short step from minimizing the crucifixion to ignoring it altogether.
Find,” is a reminder of this essential Christian aspect of the moral life and makes very good Lent and Easter Triduum reading. (Alert: the following discussion assumes you have read the story, and it contains major spoilers.) The story’s two central characters are the self-important and irritating grandmother – whose selfish petulance sets off a chain of events that lead to the murders of herself, her son, her daughter-in-law and her three grandchildren – and “The Misfit,” one of three escapees from a nearby Georgia prison. On a family car trip, the grandmother causes her son to crash on a backcountry road. When The Misfit arrives at the scene with his companions, the grandmother recognizes him as one of the escaped convicts. O’Connor implies that the three already committed multiple murders since their escape, and the grandmother attempts to negotiate her family’s way out of a similar fate.
Her faith was in This is a fundamental theological mistake for at least two reasons. First, resurrection without one cannot properly understand the crucifixion, which allowed grandeur of resurrection without her to indulge in her own considering the agony of crucifixion. self-centered and selfBypassing Golgotha for the empty tomb is to ignore the torture Christ seeking moral life without endured on our behalf. Second, and any sense of contradicting “You shouldn’t call yourself The Misfit more to the point of this column, her salvation. because I know you’re a good man at crucifixion has a central role in heart,” she declaims. “Nome, I ain’t a Christian morality. The Easter events good man,” The Misfit demurs. He explains that he was sent are about heavenly salvation, but they are also about how to the penitentiary for a crime he claims he cannot remember, we order our earthly lives. When we minimize or ignore although we learn that he probably killed his father. To this, the crucifixion, we forget that we are called to participate in the grandmother implores him to make his confession: “If that very execution. And, thus, we forget the foundation of you would pray . . . Jesus would help you.” But The Misfit authentic Christian discipleship. declines: “I don’t want no hep. . . . I’m doing all right by myself.” As his companions methodically shoot and kill all Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to 1 6 | THE CATHOLIC TE LEGRAPH
