My Easter message

From a letter written by Flannery O'Connor in 1962:

"Students get so bound up with difficulties such as reconciling the clashing of so many different faiths such as Buddhism, Mohamedanism [Islam], etc., that they cease to look for God in other ways. [Robert] Bridges once wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins and asked him to tell him how he, Bridges, could believe. Bridges was an agnostic. He must have expected from Hopkins a long philosophical answer.

"Hopkins wrote back, 'Give alms.'

"He was trying to say to Bridges that God is to be experienced in Charity (in the sense of love for the divine image in human beings). Don't get so entangled with intellectual difficulties that you fail to look for God in this way."