October 1: A Severe Mercy

Welcome to the American Catholic Daily Reader podcast. Today is October 1st, and our story is A Severe Mercy. They met angrily in the dead of winter. Sheldon Van Vanouken was a college student home for Christmas break. Jean Davey was a clerk at a department store, working her way through school.

Ten months later, on October 1, 1937, they married. Seventeen years later, on January 17, 1955, she died. And, twenty-two years after her death, he attempted to make sense of their story, of their love, his loss, and the grace that surprised them both, in the best-selling book, A Severe Mercy.

In the decades that followed, thousands of people met Van through that account of his life with Davy. Readers knew of their service in Pearl Harbor during World War II, and of their sailing adventures on the schooner Grey Goose. They also knew of the couple's time at Oxford, where C.S. Lewis's friendship helped lead the former agnostics to Christ. Most of all, they knew of Van and Davy's all-consuming love, a love they protected with what they called a shining barrier, shutting out anything that could pull them apart.

What many fans of A Severe Mercy don't know, however, is the rest of the story, the story that followed Davy's 1955 death from liver disease. They don't know that as an English professor at Lynchburg College, Van spent the 1960s and 1970s championing civil rights, opposing the Vietnam War, and supporting the feminist movement. They also don't know that in 1981, Vann converted to Catholicism, and subsequently penned hundreds of essays for Catholic periodicals. Nor do they know of his other books, including two that reflected upon life after Davy, Under the Mercy in 1985, and The Little Lost Marian and Other Mercies in 1996.

After Van Auken's death in late 1996, friends scattered his ashes where he had scattered Davy's ashes four decades earlier, at the foot of a cross near St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Forest, Virginia, and in a churchyard in England.

Van and Davy's devotion exemplifies how shared faith, intellectual curiosity, and friendship can shape a life of meaning. Reflect on a relationship that has shaped your life. Offer a prayer of gratitude today for the ways it has taught you love and resilience.

Thank you for listening to the American Catholic Daily Reader podcast. Join us tomorrow, October 2nd, for another story of faith and courage in America.