The Catholic Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien

“Humanity in every age, and even today, looks to works of art to shed light upon its path and its destiny. “
– Pope John Paul II

I had a wonderful conversation last week with Generation Life speaker Matt Chominiski on the Catholic vision of J.R.R. Tolkien. We blazed a trail with the characters of the Fellowship through some of the inspiring themes that made this novel a worldwide phenomenon, and a truly Catholic classic: Providence, friendship, love, loyalty, sacrifice, creation, stewardship, a touch of Chesterton’s Distributism, virtue and vice, and the unfailing power of hope.

For the podcast, visit iTunes and search the store for “The Heart of Things or Bill Donaghy” or just click here and listen right from the podcast website (the show is an hour long and may take some time to download).

WEB ARTICLES AND ESSAYS:
http://tolkienandchristianity.blogspot.com/

BOOKS on TOLKIEN:
J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-Earth, by Bradley J. Birzer.

J.R.R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality, and Religion, by Richard L. Purtill.

Tolkien: Man and Myth, by Joseph Pierce. Ignatius Press, December 2001.

Tolkien: A Celebration – Collected Writings on a Literary Legacy, edited by Joseph Pierce. Ignatius Press, November 2001.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

New Year’s Resolution #4 – Letting Go

Letting go of things is never easy.
Letting go of our addictions is never, ever, easy…

Even when they are burning hot Rings of Doom, made by the Enemy, emblazoned with the fiery script of the Black Speech of Mordor, and pretty much telling us in so many words that they are in fact Evil, we are loathe to part with our precioussss “fill in the blank.”

We cling so often to what we know is not good for us, to what we know in our minds and hearts is unhealthy for us. We wantsss it, precioussss…. we wantssss it… Perhaps because it gives us a sense of control or some comfort or it nurses our pride, or becomes the envy of our enemy. What makes the letting go so difficult is the fact that we have poured so much of ourselves into the Thing (whatever, or whoever, it is), just as Sauron poured his malice and his cunning and all of his art, twisted though it was, into the Ring of Power. What happens when we pour ourselves into a creature and not the Creator? Then the possession, the creature or created thing, becomes the possessor. It gets a power over us, and the possessor gets possessed! By refusing to give ourselves freely in love, we lose ourselves tragically in lust; for a power, or a plaything, or even a person that we have made into a god.

We need to break these addictions. We need someone to unfold our knotted fists and open them up to freedom.

Frodo of the Shire. Even Mr. Baggins failed in the end, didn’t he? At the end of all things, it appeared that even Frodo could not resist the power of the Ring, and succumbed to its weight, there at the very Crack of Doom. “Just let it go!” cried the ever faithful Sam. But Frodo could not loosen his grip and let such a small thing fall away from him.

I’ve often pondered Tolkien’s decision in writing this ending. After all, they had come so far, proven themselves over and over again, starved and staggered, fasted and fumbled through countless miles to come to this point. Why did Frodo fail in the end?

This is the melancholic tone that sounds throughout Tolkien’s writing, the sadness and sense of what Tolkien himself called the “long defeat.” It’s a reflection of our human story. We are all of us prodigal sons and daughters. Original Sin should be the one dogma of the Catholic Faith that needs no defense or apologetic. Its echo resounds in every one of our endeavors, every task, every ambition, encounter, effort and ache in the heart. We are wounded, and we need help. We can only come so far, give so much and then, when the leap is wider than our eyes can fathom, or the task to heavy for us to bear, we choke. We hold back. We don’t want to let go, jump, trust, abandon. And the discordant music that ripped a black hole in the fabric of the cosmos swells up again in the human heart. “I will not serve.” – “I won’t let go!”

Thank God another hand was there that day, when Frodo refused to let the Ring fall. But it was an unexpected hand, a gnarled and withered hand that saved the day. Gollum clutched and grasped at his master and bit the hand of Frodo, causing the Ring to plummet into fire and out of memory.

How often does it seem that Providence puts these unwelcome hands in our way, gnarled and withered hands that take things away from us, tear at us and tease us. It should be stressed that this is not the Hand of God… directly. He wills only our good and we must believe this, we must trust this. But we must know too that God is a jealous Lover. And He may from time to time unbind and allow the hands of the Devil to act. This is the mysterium iniquitatis, the mystery of evil, and the mystery of Good as well. The puzzling Plan of Providence.

Does this frighten us? Is this an unsettling thought for us? To consider that God would ever allow us, His children to be burned, to be hurt, to suffer like Job? It takes tremendous faith, and a laser focus on that one thing needful, that pearl of great price. It is, we find in the end, not the pearl that matters, but the Person holding it. All else must fall away. Everything must fall away and we must be stripped, just as Frodo and Samwise on their journey through Mordor, and Abraham through the countless miles to Canaan, and Moses in the wilderness, and Hannah in her tears, and David in his battles, and Anthony in his barren cave, Clare in the cutting of her hair and all the ties that bound her to comfort. Everyone must pass through Mordor, through Calvary. And there, if we are to be free, we must lay down the Precious. Cast it into the fire, let it burn upon the altar of the Cross.

And then will be free. Then we will cry with Samwise when the Ring was destroyed and he passed from death to unexpected Life “I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!”

For when our hands are truly empty, God can finally fill them.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

What’s Wrong With You?

There is a moving scene (among many) in the film The Fellowship of the Ring where the character of Aragorn, known as Strider, struggles with his own mortal weakness. In the quiet of Rivendell, in a dimly lit chamber where ancient memories are held sacred, he gazes on a painting of his ancestor, Isildur. It was he who in ages long past cut the Ring from the Dark Lord’s finger and saved Middle-Earth from defeat. But it was by that same Ring that Isildur himself fell into weakness and death. The memory of that fatal flaw has haunted Aragorn his entire life.

As he turns to the shadows in this fog of fear and shame. He sees his love, Arwen approach and she speaks a word of confidence to him. “Why do you fear the past? You are Isildur’s heir, not Isildur himself. You are not bound to his fate.”

The future King replies “The same blood flows in my veins. The same weakness…”

What is it that “leads us into temptation”? Why do we so often do the evil that we hate, and not do the good we know we should do? The answers to questions about sin, suffering, death, neuroses and psychoses are all bound up and tightly packed in the simple phrase “Original Sin.” The sheer density of this reality is like the weight of galaxies. It’s like our collapsed star, a black hole in the human universe.

Original Sin is the sin at our origins. And it’s real. Painfully real. Other dogmas and doctrines in the Church sometimes need more expounding, more unfolding for us to see them more clearly. For the doctrine of Original Sin, we only need to look in the mirror, or to read a newspaper. Before we are tempted to dismiss it as something irrelevant to our everyday lives, another doctrine of the Church that’s all “spiritual and stuff,” let’s pause…. if we miss this, it will be impossible for us to ever truly know ourselves, others, or this beautiful but broken creation that has been dying and rising with us all our lives.

In the beginning, with the sin of Adam and Eve, there was a terrible break, a mortal wound that caused four major fractures in our relationships as human persons. These four Original Wounds are still experienced by every son or daughter of Adam and Eve. They are breaks in our relationships with God, within ourselves, with each other, and with creation. We all feel them, we all experience them in some fashion every day. They are our ancestral heritage. They are in the blood (which is why we need the blood of Jesus to be poured out for us in a Divine transfusion – that’s the Mass).

Think of your life. It’s a good examination of conscience every day to look at these four areas and to ask the question, “Have I been healed?” The good news is, we have the cure today. The blood of Jesus is with us. His Sacred Heart is here! The organ is ready to be transplanted within the hollow of our chest. New life, a strong heart, and reconciliation…. finally!

In Jesus ALONE is this reconciliation made… In Jesus ALONE is real union and communion. Has this truth really sunk in for us? Peace and reconciliation will NOT come from politics, the Republicans, the Democrats… economics, a new haircut, or a new job… a new car, a new relationship… It’s Jesus. It really is.

How strong a reaction are you having to this statement right now? Is it an “amen” or a whimper? A shrug of the shoulders or a surge of the heart? For me, it’s getting easier every day. I’m getting acclimated to this new heart and this new blood that comes to me every time I go to Mass. Sometimes it cuts. He’s that divisive. He’s a two-edged sword that slices us through like a surgeon’s knife. But this is the open heart surgery we need, or we’ll die. If we don’t have His Heart, than we suffer those mortal wounds and we’ll never accomplish our own mission or finish the journey…

Arwen the Beautiful held Aragorn’s weathered face in her hands. He was a Ranger and had seen many dangers in the wide world. She whispers “Your time will come. You will face the same evil, and you will defeat it…. The Shadow does not hold sway… Aragorn. Not over you and not over me.”

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

The Straight Road

In Tolkien’s mythology of Middle-Earth, he writes of a time before the downfall of humanity, when the world was flat. The Valar, angelic beings similar to the gods of Olympus but much more virtuous, were still present in the world. Their home was a paradise known as Tol Eressëa or the Undying Lands. Elves could reach her shores by sailing West into the sunset. After a vain attempt by mankind to seize the Blessed Realm, and immortality, by force (sound familiar?), this heaven was taken away and the World was bent. It took on the globed shape we know today, and mortals who sailed into the West simply circled the planet and eventually ended up back where they began.

For the Elves, however, a way was left open to return to the Undying Lands; it was known as the Straight Road. As if sailing on an invisible bridge, travelers could pass over the rough and mountainous seas and leave the bent world behind them. It was a grace afforded to only a handful of mortals. This was the road taken by the grey ship at the end of the Lord of the Rings. After the fall of Sauron, when peace finally returned to Middle-Earth, the ringbearers Frodo and Bilbo, and eventually Sam, were given the grace to travel the Straight Road themselves, into the West.

I couldn’t help thinking of this story last night, when we heard the reading from Luke 3:1-6 at an evening Mass in Broomall. John the Baptist cried out to a fallen race, our bent world, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

It’s coming. Our redemption is near at hand! The time when all shall be made well again. When we can stop running in circles, back to the place we started, feeling alone, abandoned, and frustrated by sin; ours and the sin around us. Finally we can take that Straight Road that leads to the Blessed Realm. It is like that invisible bridge, and perhaps some we know are already on it. They seem to travel well over this bent world, with all of it’s valleys and hills. The ship that can take us there is the Bark of Peter, the Church. And the water we sail upon is the river of grace that flows straight from God’s own life. The source of this grace? He lies in a manger, in the humblest of places. So come, let us adore Him! And find our way back home!

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Artwork: The Shores of Valinor by Ted Nasmith
On Tolkien’s mythology: Catholic Imagination

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org