It is hard to believe now, 60 years after her death, that Flannery O’Connor was once a still, small voice. 

Six decades after her death from lupus, O’Connor is revered in Catholic circles as a visionary artist who might be deserving of canonization. She is read, discussed, understood and misunderstood worldwide as a master of Southern gothic short fiction who grounded her entire life’s work in examining “the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.”  

Of her work, O’Connor said, “I write the way I do because, not though, I am a Catholic.” 

We pay much attention now to large, grand voices on the public stage. We tweet and blog and post videos in search of viral attention. The little voices, which over time often sound loudest, are usually ignored in the present. 

In her lifetime, O’Connor was indeed a little voice. She never came close to a best-seller. Her stories were published primarily in “little” literary magazines. Her largest literary prize, the National Book Award for her Collected Stories, was awarded posthumously. Her major media appearances can be counted on not even a full hand. Writer and reviewer Evelyn Waugh said of her first novel that if it were indeed the work of a woman it was a remarkable achievement. O’Connor was an art novelist who described herself as a “Hillbilly Thomist” and imagined that she would never make fodder for a biography since “not much happens between the house and the chicken yard.” 

Yet along with her contemporaries Thomas Merton and Walker Percy, O’Connor has left an enduring legacy of the essential bond between faith and the imagination. Sixty years since her death, there have appeared major biographies, a trove of original scholarly books, a litany of articles and presentations, at least two documentary films and even a feature film based on her life and work. Even amid controversy and criticism—some deserved, some not—her short life and relatively small body of work continue to fascinate and engage a new generation of readers. O’Connor herself would probably be appalled. Her self-depreciative sense of humor was after all both disarming and refreshing. 

When a co-worker told me yesterday that she and her husband would be taking a pilgrimage to Lourdes and were therefore soliciting prayer requests, I immediately thought of O’Connor. 

O’Connor threw herself upon God’s mercy, which is often what most of us—the small and the large—do when faced with suffering and crisis. When O’Connor was given the chance to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes in April 1958, she took it.   

The trip to Lourdes was a gift from O’Connor’s cousin, Katie Semmes, who hoped Flannery might be cured of her lupus. O’Connor did not want to go; as she quipped, “I would rather die for my religion than take a bath for it.” 

The planning for the trip caused O’Connor much anxiety. “It is Cousin Katie’s end-all and be-all that I get to Lourdes and if I am dead upon arrival that’s too bad but I still have to get there.” She placed herself “in the hands of this travel agent woman … whose letters get less and less cordial and I get the idea that by now she is convinced I am a moron.” 

The pilgrimage was originally planned to last close to three weeks, but a doctor urged O’Connor to shorten the trip. In the end, due in part to travel delays, O’Connor was gone from her home in Milledgeville for 16 days, with stops in Milan, Lourdes, Paris and finally Rome where she attended a general audience with Pope Pius XII. Over the course of her journey, she visited with her dear friends Sally Fitzgerald and William Sessions. Letters she wrote about the ordinary hassles of international travel reveal the familiar O’Connor humor but also a sort of helplessness. 

Spiritual maturity 

O’Connor had mixed reactions to Lourdes. She was touched by the many pilgrims who wanted to bathe in the waters and visit the shrine, but she was also appalled by the tacky souvenir shops in town. Still, O’Connor realized that “it is obvious even to me that faith has to be shown, acted out.”  

Determined to “pray for my book and not my bones,” she described her experience to her friend and mentor Elizabeth Bishop: “I went early in the morning, and it was clean; sat in a long line of peasants to wait for my turn. They passed around a thermos bottle of Lourdes water and everybody had a drink out of the top. I had a nasty cold so I figured I left more germs than I took away. The sack you take the bath in is the same one that the person before you took off, regardless of what ailed him. … The supernatural is a fact there but it displaces nothing natural, except maybe those germs.”  Summing up the entire experience as “too much too fast,” O’Connor expressed relief at having completed the journey and shared a joke she heard in Paris, “The miracle at Lourdes is that there are no epidemics.” 

Yet as the months went by, O’Connor did indeed have improvement in her symptoms. Writing to another close mentor, Caroline Gordon, O’Connor reported “Big news for me. The doctor says my hip bone is recalcifying. He is letting me walk around the room and for short spaces without the crutches. If it continues to improve, I may be off of them in a year or so. Maybe this is Lourdes.”  

She reiterated her faith in Lourdes to Father John McCown: “They told me last year that it wouldn’t get any better. I am willing to lay this to Lourdes.” She was able to report this encouraging news to her cousin Katie before she died in November: “Our cousin who gave us the trip to Lourdes is dying in Savannah but before she lost consciousness, she had the happiness of knowing that the trip to Lourdes has effected some improvement in my bones.” 

O’Connor had prayed most for her creativity rather than her physical health, and she attributed her revitalized start on her second novel “The Violent Bear It Away” as an answer also to those prayers at Lourdes. 

In reviewing my O’Connor library to write this column, I came across a beautiful statement that my colleague Lorraine Murray includes in her insightful biography of O’Connor, “The Abbess of Andalusia.” Writing about Lourdes to Father Youree Watson, O’Connor observed that “The thing about Lourdes is that you are not inclined to pray there for yourself at all as you see so many people worse off.” 

Consider that statement for a moment. Think about the spiritual maturity inherent in it. Understanding that the welfare of your neighbor is more important than your own desire is a mark of profound spiritual maturity. For O’Connor to receive that revelation of spiritual love and empathy at Lourdes is indeed the real miracle.   

A volunteer helps a disabled pilgrim to drink water during the opening Mass of the French national pilgrimage to the Lourdes Sanctuary in August. OSV News photo/courtesy Lourdes Sanctuary

For many years I have belonged to a prayer ministry. It works like this: when someone has a prayer request, the leader of the group (we don’t know who all the members are) sends an email. The message lists the initials of the person for whom we are to pray, along with a description of their intention. Sometimes weeks can go by without receiving a prayer request. At other times, we may be inundated for several consecutive days with all sorts of requests, from the simple to the tragic. 

This ministry has been perhaps the greatest spiritual exercise I’ve ever taken because it jerks the pray-er out of self-absorption into sudden concern for their neighbor. An email delivered on a smart phone compels instant response.  Many times, I have stopped in the middle of what I might have been doing to pray immediately for the heart attack victim, the biopsy result, the baby lost in childbirth, the sudden fall, the loss of employment. Almost every prayer request renders my own current worries or preoccupations insignificant. The gift of empathy I receive is the spiritual reward for the prayers I immediately offer. 

Flannery O’Connor was given this same insight upon her visit to Lourdes. She recognized it immediately as a gift. For six years after her pilgrimage, O’Connor’s work grew in maturity and insight. She deepened her awareness of theology and philosophy, even incorporating ideas about passive diminishment and the soul’s progress into stories that became not only remarkable but stunning. 

The Virgin Mary appeared at Lourdes in 1858 not to anyone powerful or important, but to a peasant girl named Bernadette. Bernadette’s report of the visions and messages she received were initially doubted and mistrusted. Now we know the truth. 

The miraculous experiences of an innocent child, the unknown and quiet intentions of pilgrims, the anonymous prayers offered on behalf of strangers and the brilliant work of a peculiar literary genius inspired by God—all these seemingly small voices can converge in a resounding affirmation of transcendence that endures long after the voices grow silent.