Category Archives: News

By Lucia A. Silecchia

I am a planner.

Every year, in the heart of the summer, I buy a new calendar because I mark the beginning of my new years not in January but at the start of each new academic year – the cyclical rhythm by which I mark my time.   Planners like I am love the sense of control and certainty that comes from plotting out the course of our upcoming weeks and months.   Usually, class times, committee meetings, family gatherings, travel, school holidays, seasonal celebrations, annual traditions and other commitments make their way into my low-tech, handwritten calendar.  This creates, in a tangible way, my beloved organization and order.

Except when I can’t plan.

As it turns out, when I look at the days, months and weeks ahead, I find myself saying “I don’t know” to the most basic of questions.   What will our fall semesters look like?  When will we meet friends for dinner again inside our favorite restaurants?   When will students come to my office again?   When will the phrases “new normal” and “please mute yourselves” fade from our lexicons?  (I’m hoping soon!)  When will masks no longer hide the faces of friends and the smiles of strangers?  When will we be able to see far-flung family members who live across the country and around the world?   Who is hosting Thanksgiving dinner, and where?  (Yes, I plan that far ahead!) When will “Zoom coffee hours” be replaced with the joy of the real thing?  When can we safely revel in family reunions, crowded school events, concerts and conferences that are real, not sterilely virtual?  When can we gather to discuss the pain that grabs our headlines in person, with each other, not through a screen or a soundbite?   When will we be able to gather to memorialize those who have passed from this life and console each other in a warm embrace?  When will the joy of parish life lived as a family return in its glorious fullness?

I don’t know.

Admitting “I don’t know” is unsettling for me.  I sense this is an experience shared by many – but most deeply shared with my fellow planners.  To lose the control I thought I had has been an unwelcome part of these past months.   Yet, perhaps it was not something lost as much as a realization that the ability to plan and control is something I never really had – even when I had the luxury of thinking I did.

I am not the first to look ahead and sigh, “I don’t know” when wondering about the details of what lies ahead.   I imagine that “I don’t know” was the thought that went through the mind of Mary when she tried to anticipate what her life would be like as the Mother of God.   It likely also went through the mind of Joseph when he contemplated how life would unfold in the unique role he was asked to play in the history of salvation.   “I don’t know” must have raced through in the minds of the disciples who tried to understand what their new vocation would demand of them.  “I don’t know” surely was in the hearts of the crowds who met Christ during His years among them as they contemplated how this encounter would change their lives.

Since then, “I do not know” has reverberated through the centuries as the saints I most admire saw their lives unfold in ways they did not plan, did not anticipate,  did not understand, and, perhaps at times, did not desire.  Yet, by saying yes when they did not know what lay ahead and giving their uncertain futures over to God, they lived the lives they did and left behind the example they did.  The examples they gave living through the big unknowns of their lives is a welcome inspiration for navigating the far smaller unknowns of mine.

I am thinking of these ancestors in faith during this unsettling summer of “I don’t know.”  I hope that they will share with me the serenity they knew when they looked ahead and did not know what would come. I hope they will share with me some of the patience they had when others, frustratingly and honestly, answer my planning questions with their own “I don’t know.” 

Most importantly, I hope that they will share with me the faith that they had as I try to learn that “I don’t know” is, at its heart, an invitation to trust.  It is an invitation to trust that all that lies ahead, for me and for us, is in the hands of God.  More than that, it is in the hands of a God who lovingly does know and care about all that happen in the unfolding of our ordinary times.

Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.

On 3 June 2020, the Collegium Institute’s Ars Vivendi Arts Initiative gathered four distinguished scholars and authors on Zoom to discuss Flannery O’Connor and her relevance during the quarantine. Speakers Amy Alznauer, IHE Fellow Jennifer Frey, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and Christine Flanagan probed into O’Connor’s work as it relates to philosophy, ordinary experience, and creativity, which included a deeper conversation on God’s grace as brought about by solitude, violence, and boredom. Throughout the discussion, the speakers discussed that while these prevalent aspects of life are often avoided or identified as negative, in reality they are opportunities to grow in grace. 

In her initial presentation, Alznauer, author of the soon-to-be released picture book, The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor: A Life, and Artist In Residence at St. Gregory the Great in Chicago, remarked that the original form of solitude is found in childhood. O’Connor knew this from her own youth and incorporated it into her works frequently. Moments of solitude experienced by her young protagonists magnified their self-knowledge in relation to God and the pursuit of truth. Being alone, regardless of age, allows a person to know himself and contemplate, a freedom vital to the reception of grace and truth, especially amid the distractions of modernity.

When the discussion opened for audience questions, the topic of violence prompted another important supposition: is there a tension between enjoyment of literature and the grotesque elements that often appear in O’Connor’s stories? Hooten Wilson, Associate Professor of Literature at John Brown University and the author of Giving the Devil His Due: Flannery O‘Connor and The Brothers Karamazov, asserted that, while people tend to fixate on O’Connor’s violence, the point of the violence is not merely to horrify but to make possible a moment of grace. In both literature and reality, violence is important not for its own sake but for the sake of eventual virtue; it forces society to see its distorted ways and choose to retain or overcome them. Ultimately, the violence of purgative fire is a passage to ensuing grace.

The final question of the evening explored whether solitude, that strange state simultaneously fruitful and boring, is the result of fallen human nature or the appropriate state of a soul that can only be satisfied by God. All four speakers agreed that boredom is good. Flanagan, Professor of English at University of the Sciences and the editor of The Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon, found boredom to be a necessary condition of an artist; O’Connor reportedly would sit at her desk for hours while waiting for ideas. Frey, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and co-editor of Self-Transcendence and Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology, asserted that boredom is beautiful and “the mistress of receptivity,” being none other than the passive, silent state that precedes inspiration. Hooten Wilson concurred that the resting of heart and mind, which is now called boredom, is actually an openness to deep contemplation and the grace of God.

During this time of national distress, the Christian must not despair but rejoice. Opportunities to develop virtue are present today in the least-expected, even initially distasteful, places of boredom and quiet.

By Lucia A. Silecchia

In this life, if we are fortunate, we may meet a few people who, for want of a better word, become our mentors.  Usually, but not always, they are our elders – a bit further down the path of life and possessed of wisdom to share with us as we try to navigate life.  Over time, they become guides and friends as we try to discern what God may be calling us to do.

I have been blessed to have people such as this woven into the fabric of my life.  They encouraged me, told me that the things I wanted to do were possible, and gave me sound advice in ways that inclined me to follow it.    Two of those people, so important to me, passed from this life this spring.   Because of current limits on gatherings, I did not have a chance to pay my respects to them in person.  My letters to their families share a bit of what made them special to me and express my gratitude for the ways they helped set the course of my life.

But, their passing got me thinking more seriously about what a sacred thing it is to take the time to encourage, inspire, and guide others as they make their way through this world.   Now, by both my (rapidly advancing!) age and occupation, I find myself in the position where I can give to others the kind encouragement that was — and still is — given to me.

Each of us have received a unique set of gifts and talents.  With them comes the responsibility to use them to give glory to God and to help our neighbors as best we can.  It is often so overwhelming to discern how we might use our own abilities and talents in a responsible way that we may overlook the way in which others, too, are blessed with these things.  They may need our encouragement to ensure that those gifts and talents do not remain hidden under the all-too-ubiquitous bushel baskets that so often get in the way.

So… Do you know someone with a kind heart and sharp mind who we might need as a doctor or a nurse to guide us through medical emergencies, present and future?  Do you know someone with enthusiasm and compassion who might be a teacher who can open the eyes of a needy child to the wonder of the world?  Do you know a couple capable of that sort of love that can make their marriage an inspiration to all who will know them?  Do you know someone with a selfless heart who might say an eager “yes” to adopting a child?  Do you see in a neighbor the zeal for justice that may make him or her a political leader who could build bridges in our world of division and angst?  Do you know anyone whose skill at music or art or whose love of the written word may give the world the things of beauty that we all crave?  Do you know someone quiet and thoughtful who should think deeply about things philosophical?  Do you know a child wise beyond his or her years who is ready to launch an adventure in neighborhood service that will inspire others to join in?    Do you know men and women whose faith and hope and love suit them to lead others to God through the gift of themselves through the priesthood or in religious life?

For so many, myself included, it takes the invitation of another who says simply, “Have you thought about …” or “You would be good at …” or “Are you interested in …” to start thinking about something that might be possible.   This may be especially true of those who are shy, or who have no one in their family in a particular vocation, or who have failed at an early attempt and are on the verge of giving up.   But, perhaps, a simple invitation, followed up by steady encouragement, practical advice, and genuine concern can make all of the difference in the world.  It is not false hopes, insincere compliments, or blithe platitudes that matter.  Rather, it is the caring confidence of another who sees in us that which we may not see in ourselves that can make all the difference in the world.

I wonder if the first disciples, when called from their boats and businesses, would have known what they were capable of if Christ had not invited them, personally, with a simple “follow me.”  I doubt that any of them would have thought themselves suited by temperament, education or social standing to be the ones entrusted with the care of the Church.  Yet, Christ’s invitation and His three years of loving guidance changed them – and changed the world.

In the ordinary times of our lives, we may come to know those who have been given great gifts that they may not recognize that they have, that they may be afraid to use, or that they may be discouraged from developing.   As I think about those who have helped me along life’s way, my gratitude to them is mixed with a renewed sense of obligation to others.     All good gifts come from God.  It is also a great gift to help each other unwrap those treasures when we encourage and guide each other through ordinary times.

Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.