“And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.” — “The Return of the King” by J.R.R. Tolkien.
The world of Middle-earth has captivated the public for close to 90 years — delighting countless readers, inspiring numerous adaptations (for good and ill), and leaving an immeasurable impact on generations of authors. So many subsequent works of Western fantasy have struggled to escape its orbit (or face the inevitable comparisons with the masterwork, fairly or not). But there is something about the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien, and the themes and worlds he crafts, that transcends all this surface-level success. Tolkien’s stories — be it the charming simplicity of “The Hobbit,” the grand and epic sweep of “The Lord of the Rings,” or the imposing, near-endless depth of “The Silmarillion” — work at something deep in the human heart.
Why is this the case? Like the great myths and the tradition of medieval literature the professor loved so much, these stories tell us something true about ourselves. But more than that, in the realest sense, his tales demonstrate a deep love of beauty and truth (in the transcendent sense). Tolkien’s worlds and characters reflect the world not as it is, but as we long for it to be. His universe pulses with vibrant life, totally “enchanted,” we might say — not as a convenient backdrop for swords and sorcery, but to emphasize the world’s beauty and wonder, in times that have made every effort to desacralize and demystify it. Here is a place where true good strives against true evil. Middle-earth is not a place of childish simplicity, presented without complexity, but its structure makes possible a profound literary commentary on the power of virtue.
In Middle-earth, Christ-figures abound — the simple, resolute courage of Frodo and Sam; the gentle but fearsome power of Gandalf; the servant-king in the person of Aragorn. Marian analogues also play key roles — the beauty, wisdom and grace of the Lady Galadriel, the virtue and selfless bravery of Eowyn, and the lesser known, but no less powerful example of Luthien, who faces down Morgoth himself in “The Silmarillion.” These are but a few examples, and countless books have, and will be, written on these themes. And Middle-earth itself is filled with beautiful, poetic song (indeed, created by it, according to the opening myths of “The Silmarillion”). While “The Lord of the Rings” is not pure allegory, which Tolkien famously disliked, it is still richly symbolic. It is “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first,” Tolkien writes in one of his letters, “but consciously in the revision.”
A sacramental worldview
How can this be? At the heart of the Catholic faith is what we call the sacramental worldview: the idea that God can be known, to varying degrees, through the material world, in things both natural and manmade. It is this very concept that makes an “unconscious” Catholic work possible. Truth can be seen or written or experienced without our necessarily explicitly knowing it. The sacramentality of the world need not be explicit and obvious, as in a cross, a cathedral, a medieval icon. Often, it is far more subtle. The crashing of the waves of the sea, the majestic beauty of a mountain range in the far distance as it comes into view through low clouds, the wondrous complexity of the human body — all these things, too, point to God. The world is created good, and though it is now fallen, we still see something good about its creator, even amid all our self-inflicted flaws and imperfections. This logic is made possible in the Incarnation, whereby God becomes man and dwells among us — both in ways more obvious (the glories of the Resurrection) and less so (a tiny babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes, placed among simple animals).
This logic also applies to humanity’s stories (how appropriate, given that our God is the Word!) and is expertly carried out by Tolkien, whose deep, rich Catholic faith is evident on every page of his work. Middle-earth is a place that longs for the beautiful and for the fulfilment of love and goodness. We see this in the echoes of its fading elven realms, the promised “white shores” of the Undying Lands, and even (perhaps especially) in the simple comfort of Samwise Gamgee with his beloved wife and daughter in the warmth of the Shire at the close of the trilogy. “The Lord of the Rings” concludes not with a battle, but simply love. Could there be a resolution more inherently Catholic than this?
Tolkien was a man of staggering intellect — a master of stories, a scholar of languages — but his faith was defined not merely by what he knew, but how he loved and how he experienced that love. In a 1963 letter to his son, Michael, Tolkien says as much as he discusses the challenges of maintaining faith amid sin, scandal and cynicism. His faith found profound nourishment in the ultimate sacrament, the ultimate sign, the Eucharist. The Eucharist is at once the reality it signifies, and makes present the reality it signifies. We might call it a “sacramentalizing” gift.
‘The only cure for sagging of fainting faith’
“The only cure for sagging of fainting faith,” writes Tolkien, “is Communion.” He recommends his son receive it frequently, and then, surprisingly, suggests that he “receive it in circumstances that affront [his] taste.” Go to a church, he writes, with a “snuffling and gabbling priest,” and an unruly congregation. Receive Communion with them, he says, and pray for them. “It will be just the same,” continues Tolkien, “(or better than that), as a Mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. (It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand — after which [Our] Lord propounded the feeding that was to come)” [i.e. the Eucharist]. God is present there all the same, working. For Tolkien, there is nothing higher than the “never-ceasing silent appeal of Tabernacle, and the sense of starving hunger.”
In a world that does not always seem to reflect God, the Eucharist was that remedy for Tolkien, that gift that realigned his vision and priorities. The Eucharist was that sign — a medicine of love — that helped Tolkien to long for the true “white shores” of our eternal rest. Perhaps “unconsciously,” (and then “consciously in the revision”), Tolkien sought to put pen to paper to reflect that very longing, and to craft a world — mythical, yet real; idealized, but not entirely out of our reach — patterned toward the true gift that God is preparing. Perhaps the work which has captivated the world for almost a century has done so because it is so fundamentally grounded in the author’s desire for love and union with Christ. It does this whether readers recognize that love at first or not. And as blissful as Frodo’s “swift sunrise” sounds to our ears, it is only a foreshadowing of the joy that truly awaits us.
