St Andrew Kim and Companions: Romans 8.31-39 and Luke 9.23-26
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX
Her whole family has just been shot in front of her. “’Maybe He didn’t raise the dead,’ the old lady mumbled[…]” With this moment of desperate doubt on her lips, the Grandmother in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” collapses in the ditch with the serial killer, The Misfit, standing over her. He expresses what can only be described as a distinctly western skepticism about things mystical, “I wasn’t there so I can’t say He didn’t.” The Misfit goes on to claim that if he had been there, he would know for sure whether Jesus raised the dead or not. This knowledge might have saved him from becoming a murderer. The story continues: “His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother’s head cleared for an instant. She saw the man’s face twisted close to her own as if were going to cry and she murmured, ‘Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!’ She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them.” The Misfit orders Hiram and Bobby Lee, his fellow misfits, to drag her body off into the woods with her family. Bobby Lee says, “She was a talker, wasn’t she?” The Misfit, his eyes “red-rimmed and pale and defenseless looking,” said, “She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
Paul asks the Romans, “What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution…?” He then quotes Psalm 44, a lament, as his strange answer: “For your sake we are slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.” We are being killed daily for God’s sake. You might say that it is b/c we are being killed daily that Paul asks the question about what will separate us from the love of Christ. Or you might say that since we are not being killed gratuitously but rather for God’s sake, Paul argues then that nothing can wrench us from Christ’s love. Regardless, both lead us to the same conclusion: we would be better Christians if there were someone to shoot us every minute of our lives.
The Grandmother’s empty and terribly haughty religiosity kept her pinned in a bourgeois mud hole. She wallowed in respectability, distant affection, whiny self-righteousness, and crisis superstition. It wasn’t until she found herself in a real mud hole with a gun in her face that her spirit grasped the truth of who she is. At that moment of the Misfit’s greatest vulnerability as a sinner, she reached out: “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” She took up her cross, perhaps for the first time. And died as Christ for her son. Her murderer.*
What does it take for you, for us to see with crystal clarity that nothing—not angels, not powers, not death—that nothing can separate you from the love of Christ? If nothing, nothing at all, can separate us from the love that gave us birth as new men and women in Christ, what are we waiting for? What fear, what anxiety, what worldly claim on our souls, what possible embarrassment holds us back from our witness, our daily martyrdom for God’s sake? The Psalmist cries out to God, “For your sake we are being killed all day long!” Daily we are being killed. Will your death today be a witness or a waste?
If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
*The Misfit is a Christ-figure for the Grandmother. After all, it’s his moment of suffering that brings her to her own epiphany and his gun that martrys her.
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX
Her whole family has just been shot in front of her. “’Maybe He didn’t raise the dead,’ the old lady mumbled[…]” With this moment of desperate doubt on her lips, the Grandmother in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” collapses in the ditch with the serial killer, The Misfit, standing over her. He expresses what can only be described as a distinctly western skepticism about things mystical, “I wasn’t there so I can’t say He didn’t.” The Misfit goes on to claim that if he had been there, he would know for sure whether Jesus raised the dead or not. This knowledge might have saved him from becoming a murderer. The story continues: “His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother’s head cleared for an instant. She saw the man’s face twisted close to her own as if were going to cry and she murmured, ‘Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!’ She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them.” The Misfit orders Hiram and Bobby Lee, his fellow misfits, to drag her body off into the woods with her family. Bobby Lee says, “She was a talker, wasn’t she?” The Misfit, his eyes “red-rimmed and pale and defenseless looking,” said, “She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
Paul asks the Romans, “What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution…?” He then quotes Psalm 44, a lament, as his strange answer: “For your sake we are slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.” We are being killed daily for God’s sake. You might say that it is b/c we are being killed daily that Paul asks the question about what will separate us from the love of Christ. Or you might say that since we are not being killed gratuitously but rather for God’s sake, Paul argues then that nothing can wrench us from Christ’s love. Regardless, both lead us to the same conclusion: we would be better Christians if there were someone to shoot us every minute of our lives.
The Grandmother’s empty and terribly haughty religiosity kept her pinned in a bourgeois mud hole. She wallowed in respectability, distant affection, whiny self-righteousness, and crisis superstition. It wasn’t until she found herself in a real mud hole with a gun in her face that her spirit grasped the truth of who she is. At that moment of the Misfit’s greatest vulnerability as a sinner, she reached out: “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” She took up her cross, perhaps for the first time. And died as Christ for her son. Her murderer.*
What does it take for you, for us to see with crystal clarity that nothing—not angels, not powers, not death—that nothing can separate you from the love of Christ? If nothing, nothing at all, can separate us from the love that gave us birth as new men and women in Christ, what are we waiting for? What fear, what anxiety, what worldly claim on our souls, what possible embarrassment holds us back from our witness, our daily martyrdom for God’s sake? The Psalmist cries out to God, “For your sake we are being killed all day long!” Daily we are being killed. Will your death today be a witness or a waste?
If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
*The Misfit is a Christ-figure for the Grandmother. After all, it’s his moment of suffering that brings her to her own epiphany and his gun that martrys her.
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