August 30, 2003
LIGHT FOR THE WORLD
J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth (Zenit, 8/30/2003)Tolkien wrote in an oft-quoted letter to a close friend in 1953 that "The Lord of the Rings" is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. And Tolkien was a devout and practicing Catholic throughout most of his life. According to his son Michael, Roman Catholicism "pervaded all his thinking, beliefs and everything else."...
My personal favorite [Christian symbol] is the Elvish Lembas, translated as the "way bread" or "life bread." Even one piece of the bread can sustain a person for a day. Tolkien wrote that it "fed the will," and certainly without it, neither Frodo nor Sam would have made the journey across Mordor and up Mount Doom....
When Gandalf faces the Balrog, he not only accepts death, but he names his master, the Secret Fire. According to what Tolkien told a friend, the Secret Fire was the Holy Spirit....
True myth, [Tolkien held], drew its inspiration from the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ. Tolkien wrote in his academic essay, "On Fairy-Stories," that to reject the Christ story is to lead to either sadness or wrath.
It seems true that the nations that have always rejected the Christ story -- Iraq, for example -- have mostly experienced sadness and wrath; while those that have accepted it, like the U.S., are happiest; and those that have increasingly rejected it, as in Europe, are experiencing life as increasingly dreary.
Christians will take this as evidence for the truth of Christian doctrine; unbelievers will argue that it may be a chance correlation. But at some point, the evidence piles up.