So, when slowly reading my way through the new edition of JRRT's LETTERS, I find that in some cases I'm more struck by passages we already knew from the 1981 edition than the new material, fascinating though that may be. For example, what are we to make of this passage from Letter to Michael (page 74, #66)?
Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated,
I put before you the one great thing on earth: the
Blessed Sacrament . . . . . There you will find romance,
glory, honour, fidelity, and the one true way of all
your loves upon earth . . . Death.
page 74. Letter to Michael (#66)
Unlike (say) Lewis, Tolkien seems to have been less interested in the formal doctrine of the Church (though he was well-versed in it) than he took great comfort in its rites and rituals. This I suspect was at the root of his opposition to the replacement of Latin with the vernacular.*
As for the sacrament, and the priority he assigns to it: is he here relating his experience of being in the presence of God?
--John R.
current reading: two essays by Joseph Conrad on the sinking of the Titanic.
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You must have heard (or perhaps not) that this was precisely the passage that the Pope quoted in his Christmas Eve address this year? I think perhaps this is one of those things that it's not easy for a non-Catholic (never mind non-christian or non-believer) to understand at all.
His discussions of Holy communion were very familiar to me, other Catholics talked about having this sort of experience with Communion. It was common enough growing up that I wondered if I was broken because I never had a similar experience from Communion. But that is probably one reason I'm no longer Catholic.
A kindred passage from a called The Hammer of God, by a Swedish bishop:
He [the pastor] lifted his hand in blessing over the old silver chalice, while reading the Words of Institution. The sun hit the gilded brim making a flashing light-spot on the inside of the chalice so that the wine shimmered blood-red with rays of rubies and gold.
“… saying: Drink ye all of it. This cup is the New Testament in my Blood, which is shed for many, for the remission of sins.”
While reading the Words of Institution and making the sign of the cross over the chalice, he noticed that he started to tremble. This mystery always became overwhelming, when he stood next to it. Today he saw almost a revelation. It was as if the shining silver bowl with the wine was transformed into a heart, created out of the shining substance from some celestial glory, filled with a blood that was pure and atoning, eternal and divine—and yet as warm and living as the warmth in a fellow human being’s hand.
This shining heart was the center of all life. The sun and the worlds circled around it, the variegated scenarios of all history moved around it in billowing fluctuation, and the seraphs worshiped it in wide shining circles. It had been shining from the beginning of the world, its light penetrated the darkness of the morning of creation, and the trees in Paradise sang its praise with billowing branches. Then darkness came upon the earth, an angry sea of twisted limbs rolled forward with intertwined bodies in violent wrestling, the air shaking from curses and cries of agony. The sky was filled with red, flickering clouds, and the inescapably just retribution appeared like a sword between the clouds.
Then the shining heart descended over the storming sea like a setting sun. Like the sun going down, it was immersed in the black waves, which hissing with rage threw themselves over the bright edge of the chalice. The Holy Blood was poured like streams of gold and ruby over the dirt and the unclean rags in the rolling mass of agonizing humans.
Then the miracle happened. As the wave of a mighty wind washes away the sand from a large stone slab, likewise the blood and the dirt were washed away. Individual people appeared, set free from the rolling mass, and rising slowly they looked in amazement at the chalice that in a new glory had risen out of the black depth, now standing as a bright rock in the midst of the waves. The sky above was high and clear, the sun shone, and the angels sang: It is finished.
Dale Nelson
I notice a current trend that attempts to separate Tolkien from the doctrine of the Catholic faith by distinguishing and separating doctrine from what has been called “lived religion” or his “lived experience” of it. For example, Tom Emanuel, citing Carpenter, asserts that “The Sacraments, and especially the Eucharist, were always far more central to Tolkien’s faith than biblical or doctrinal interpretation” (Mythlore 143). To this I offer a few responses as a (nearly) life-long Catholic:
1) I should hope very much indeed that the Eucharist (especially!) was “more central to Tolkien’s faith” than doctrine: it should be true for every Catholic, theologian or otherwise. It was unquestionably true even for Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the Catholic Doctor par excellence. Which is to say, that this is about as unremarkable an observation or claim as can be made about any Catholic, let alone Tolkien, who clearly had more than passing familiarity with Aquinas himself.
2) The divide between the Catholic sacraments/rites/faith on the one hand and Catholic doctrine on the other is (rather famously) not nearly so complete as such observations imply. The Eucharist itself provides perhaps the best demonstration of just how intertwined the two are. It is Catholic doctrine that has preserved and imparts the understanding of the Eucharist as — literally — Christ made present on Earth, the Real Presence before us (and taken, _in fact and in substance_, into us) at every Mass, and so as the “source and summit of the Christian life” (as the Church teaches), to which perfection Tolkien here alludes. It is doctrine that preserves and imparts the understanding of the very significance of the sacraments and rites of the Church, without which they become (as history has amply shown) mere symbolic gestures devoid of concrete efficacy and meaning (and are even dispensed with). One may in rejoinder note that there are many Catholics that don’t share this understanding of the Eucharist or other sacraments and rites, and that is (sadly) true (and increasingly so in a rapidly secularizing West that has forgotten vast portions of its own intellectual history); but Tolkien very clearly did share it, and did himelf derive it from an education in Catholic doctrine.
This line of argument is, in short, defective in its premises (stated and unstated), and so carries not nearly the weight that its proponents think it does.
I notice a current trend that attempts to separate Tolkien from the doctrine of the Catholic faith by distinguishing and separating doctrine from what has been called “lived religion” or his “lived experience” of it. For example, Tom Emanuel, citing Carpenter, asserts that “The Sacraments, and especially the Eucharist, were always far more central to Tolkien’s faith than biblical or doctrinal interpretation” (Mythlore 143). To this I offer a few responses as a (nearly) life-long Catholic:
1) I should hope very much indeed that the Eucharist (especially!) was “more central to Tolkien’s faith” than doctrine: it should be so for every Catholic, theologian or otherwise. It was unquestionably true even for Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the Catholic Doctor par excellence. Which is to say, that this is about as unremarkable an observation or claim as can be made about any Catholic, let alone Tolkien, who clearly had more than passing familiarity with Aquinas himself.
2) The divide between the Catholic sacraments/rites/faith on the one hand and Catholic doctrine on the other is (rather famously) not nearly so complete as such observations imply. The Eucharist itself provides perhaps the best demonstration of just how intertwined the two are. It is Catholic doctrine that has preserved and imparts the understanding of the Eucharist as — literally — Christ made present on Earth, the Real Presence before us (and received, _in fact and in substance_, into us) at every Mass, and so as the “source and summit of the Christian life” (as the Church teaches), to which perfection Tolkien here alludes. It is doctrine that preserves and imparts the understanding of the very significance of the sacraments and rites of the Church, without which they become (as history has amply shown) mere symbolic gestures devoid of concrete efficacy and meaning (and are even dispensed with). One may in rejoinder note that there are many Catholics that don’t share this understanding of the Eucharist or other sacraments and rites, and that is (sadly) true (and increasingly so in a rapidly secularizing West that has forgotten vast portions of its own intellectual history); but Tolkien very clearly did share it, and did himself derive it from an education in Catholic doctrine.
This line of argument is, in short, defective in its premises (stated and unstated), and so carries not nearly the weight that its proponents think it does.
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