Joy and the Path of Difficult Fidelity

Flannery O’Connor famously said books of devotional literature have only one effect: to corrupt the reader’s taste. They did not make her want to pray. O’Connor gives a pretty good two-prong test for any book on “Christian living.” The most important question is whether it makes one want to pray. But also important is whether it is written in such a way as to give the reader language for talking to others about the things of God and prayer. This collection of writings by the late Sister Mary David Totah, a Benedictine nun for 32 years until her death of cancer in 2017, is a good test-case for the Flannery Rule.