Came across this recently in an essay by the American Catholic novelist, Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964):
Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: The dragon sits by the side of the road watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon. No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller.
(Flannery O’Connor: Mystery and Manners, Occasional prose selected and edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald; New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1957; p. 35)
Are the stories that we tell in the catechumenate “stories of any depth”? Would anyone guess that the journey of the Christian life “passes by the dragon” (whatever form this takes)?
Something to think about.
