With Man It Is Impossible
One of the more discouraging aspects in reading of the lives of the brilliant Catholic authors Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor is that they seemed to have little influence faith-wise on their closest friends.
Percy's friend Shelby Foote died (for all we know) still agnostic. And O'Connor's, known as the mysterious "A" in "The Habit of Being", Betty Hester, left the Church in 1961 and died an atheist in 1998.
I had the nerve to briefly consider that a knock against O'Connor, but the obvious answer is only God can change hearts and that human endeavors are inadequate, even assuming many prayers on behalf of their friends from O'Connor & Percy. It is a very American thing to be results-oriented but God isn't. As Flannery herself wrote, "We are not judged by what we are basically. We are judged by how hard we use what we have been given. Success means nothing to the Lord."
So whether O'Connor or Percy were successful in communicating a vision of their faith was not important. They were judged by how hard they make use of what they'd been given. And for Hester & Foote, it's painful to contemplate their status at the time of their deaths but I remind myself that ours is a God of Mercy.
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