SACRAMENTAL SUFFERING: THE FRIENDSHIP OF FLANNERY O’CONNOR AND ELIZABETH HESTER1

As the only orthodox Christian writer the American nation has yet produced, Flannery O’Connor created a remarkable body of fiction rooted in a profoundly sacramental theology. The depth of O’Connor's sacramentalism has recently been revealed with the opening of her remarkable letters to Elizabeth Hester, her most important epistolary friend. Their eleven‐year correspondence centers upon two inseparable matters: conversion and suffering. The aim of this essay is to explore how the gift (or refusal) of faith comes through the embrace (or rejection) of a participation in God's own life through a life of sacramental suffering.