Flannery’s Peacock

A Homily for the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica (32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time 2025)

Flannery O’Connor had peacocks! Among other animals on the 1960’s Georgia farm on which the Catholic Southern writer lived with her mother Regina, there were peacocks. And because of this the peacock has often been closely related to O’Connor, but not just because they roamed the farmland of her southern home.

The symbol of the peacock has always been significant in Christianity. The peacock, with its wonderfully brilliant colors, has always represented new life, new beginnings, and resurrection. And this stems also from non- & pre-Christian symbolism, where it was believed that the peacock could eat venomous snakes and metabolize the poison so it would be transformed through the peacock into the audacious colors of its tailfeathers.

“Flannery’s Peacock” then is more than just a peculiar bird that roamed her home. “Flannery’s Peacock,” I suggest, also symbolically roams the pages of every short story O’Connor ever wrote. In all her stories lies a very real tension: Can the central character of the story learn to metabolize and transform the particular poison with which they are confronted and so make manifest the redemptive power of Christ? And for O’Connor that poison could be anything from graphic, violent tragedy, to radical injustice. Or it could just be the daily struggle with the limitations that haunt a human life, struggles with faith, or simply awaiting the extraordinary that can only be accessed through the sometimes seemingly brutal ordinary.

But, you may rightfully ask: “What does this have to do with today’s feast, the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome?” Well, as you know this feast is not about a building, but what it symbolizes: the Universal Church, the Church as the People of God, and each of us, as we are reminded in our scriptures today, who are Temples of the Holy Spirit. And it has to do with a critique once rightfully lodged against the Church by the Franciscan spiritual writer, Richard Rohr. Rohr once wrote about how the Church often fails to accomplish, perhaps, its central task and that is to teach people how to metabolize their pain, hurt, tragedy, doubt, and fear and allow it to be transformed into new life so that they might become witnesses to the reality of Resurrection. So, we can ask: Why does the Church too often fail at this task?

Well, the solution is not a top down one but rather a bottom up one! If the Church is to be the place where people learn to metabolize the poison of life so it is transformed into new life then everyday people like you and me must accept wholeheartedly the words from 2 Chronicles where God says: “I have chosen and consecrated this house, (you and me), that my name may be there forever.” Or, as St. Paul writes: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”

The Church as institution, the Church as the People of God, the Church as you and me can only help others metabolize and transform the tragedy of life, the particular poison they are confronted with, in as far as we commit ourselves to learn to do the very same thing in our own lives.

So, we could ask ourselves: “Where is Flannery’s Peacock roaming about in my own life right now? Where am I being invited to metabolize the particular poison that confronts me, in the guise of fear, doubt, tragedy, or injustice so it might be transformed through me into the brilliant colors of Christ’s Resurrection?” When we can do this we witness to others that they too can do it and when they do it the People of God are transformed, the institution is transformed and we become a Church that can metabolize the poison of the world into the bright colors of Resurrection. Resurrection as Real. Resurrection as a Daily Event. Resurrection as Now!

The Church at its best turns salt water fresh and reminds us that human beings are not marketplaces to be exploited and manipulated, but rather they carry within them the dignity of being a Temple of the Holy Spirit. The Church, at its best, turns the crosses of our lives into trees that bear fruit that nourish and sprout leaves that heal. It teaches us how to metabolize the poison of our lives and let it be transformed into an utterly new life: “a single, intricate design of brilliant color” (O’Connor).

But the Church can only accomplish this in as far as we are willing to learn how to do the same with whatever poisons are polluting our own lives.

“Flannery’s Peacock” is roaming the pages of our own stories right now. How then are we being invited to metabolize the poison that confronts us, so God might transform it into the audaciously hopeful colors of resurrection?