During the summer of 1980, Marsha and I spent a few weeks in Princeton, NJ. "The Theory and Practice of the Christian Ministry," a course taught by Pastor (now Father) Richard John Neuhaus at the local Presbyterian seminary, had lured us there.

During one of the classes, Neuhaus told an unforgettable story about Flannery O'Connor. At the time, I did not know of Flannery O'Connor. Since then, I learned that, as a Catholic author from the South, she wrote many fascinating short stories with Christian themes. Her Complete Stories contains many such stories that reward their readers.

Just last month, I read, for the first time, O'Connor's version of the story that Neuhaus had told in 1980. Flannery O'Connor wrote: "I was once . . . taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater. . . . She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual. . . . Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the 'most portable' person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, 'Well, if it's a symbol, to [heck]* with it.' That was all the defense I was capable of, but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable . . . " (Letters of Flannery O'Connor: The Habit of Being, 1988).

Believing in the Real Presence of Christ in Holy Communion, United Methodists can offer a hearty Amen! to O'Connor's strong comment. We, too, believe that Holy Communion is not a symbol. Jesus Christ's Real Presence in Holy Communion is "the center of existence" for us.