March 12, 2011

• Something Edifying for the First Sunday of Lent

  

  No secret here; I love J.R.R. Tolkien. I was an instantaneous fan of the recent films, which eventually inspired me to read the books two summers ago. I tried reading them in high school but I could never finish Fellowship of the Ring. I then felt a powerful tug to read them again when I was doing the Spiritual Exercises during my novitiate, and I had a difficult time not thinking about Aragorn while contemplating the Call of Christ the King!

  When I finally did read the novels my heart just melted; they are so beautiful. I realized that God knew that words like Tolkien’s would touch my heart deeply, and so I think He gently maneuvered my life around so that I would not read them in their entirety until I came to appreciate something else first: my Catholic faith. Once I had begun to understand the work of God throughout history, began to know Christ and to know His Blessed Mother, began to love the Eucharist, the Church and everything else I think my heart was ready and open to the whole depth of Tolkien’s story. I was hardly surprised at all, then, when I discovered that he was a devout Catholic with a very, very deep devotion to Mary and the Blessed Sacrament (Galadriel and lembas, anyone?). The story takes on a whole new richness and relevance for me now that I am reading them with the same “eyes” with which Tolkien wrote them in the first place!

  All that being said, I recently checked out a book of his collected letters and read one that was both beautiful and heartbreaking. He is writing to his son, Michael, who among many things is really struggling with his faith. Tolkien, now a very old man, tries to encourage his son but also shares his own regrets where he feels he failed as a father and as a Catholic. Here are some sections of that letter for your enjoyment, contemplation and edification.

  “You speak of ‘sagging faith’, however. That is quite another matter: In the last resort faith is an
  act of will, inspired by love. Our love may be chilled and our will eroded by the spectacle of the
  shortcomings, folly, and even sins of the Church and its ministers, but I do not think that one who
  has once had faith goes back over the line for these reasons (least of all anyone with any historical 

  knowledge). ‘Scandal’ at most is an occasion of temptation – as indecency is to lust, which it does

  not make but arouses. It is convenient because it tends to turn our eyes away from ourselves and our
  own faults to find a scape-goat. But the act of will of faith is not a single moment of final decision :
  it is a permanent indefinitely repeated act > state which must go on – so we pray for ‘final
  perseverance’. The temptation to ‘unbelief (which really means rejection of Our Lord and His
  claims) is always there within us. Part of us longs to find an excuse for it outside us. The stronger
  the inner temptation the more readily and severely shall we be ‘scandalized’ by others. I think I am
  as sensitive as you (or any other Christian) to the ‘scandals’, both of clergy and laity. I have suffered
  grievously in my life from stupid, tired, dimmed, and even bad priests; but I now know enough
  about myself to be aware that I should not leave the Church (which for me would mean leaving the
  allegiance of Our Lord) for any such reasons: I should leave because I did not believe, and should
  not believe any more, even if I had never met any one in orders who was not both wise and saintly.
  I should deny the Blessed Sacrament, that is: call Our Lord a fraud to His face.

  If He is a fraud and the Gospels fraudulent – that is : garbled accounts of a demented
  megalomaniac (which is the only alternative), then of course the spectacle exhibited by the Church
  (in the sense of clergy) in history and today is simply evidence of a gigantic fraud. If not, however,
  then this spectacle is alas! only what was to be expected: it began before the first Easter, and it does
  not affect faith at all – except that we may and should be deeply grieved. But we should grieve on
  our Lord’s behalf and for Him, associating ourselves with the scandalizers not with the saints, not
  crying out that we cannot ‘take’ Judas Iscariot, or even the absurd & cowardly Simon Peter, or the
  silly women like James’ mother, trying to push her sons.

  It takes a fantastic will to unbelief to suppose that Jesus never really ‘happened’, and more to
  suppose that he did not say the things recorded of him – so incapable of being ‘invented’ by anyone
  in the world at that time : such as ‘before Abraham came to be l am’ (John viii). ‘He that hath seen
  me hath seen the Father’ (John ix); or the promulgation of the Blessed Sacrament in John v: ‘He that
  eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life’. We must therefore either believe in Him
  and in what he said and take the consequences; or reject him and take the consequences. I find it for
  myself difficult to believe that anyone who has ever been to Communion, even once, with at least
  right intention, can ever again reject Him without grave blame. (However, He alone knows each
  unique soul and its circumstances.)

  The only cure for sagging of fainting faith is Communion. Though always Itself, perfect and
  complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any
  of us. Like the act of Faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest
  effect. Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals. Also I can recommend
  this as an exercise (alas! only too easy to find opportunity for): make your communion in
  circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar
  friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children – from those who yell to
  those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn –
  open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered.
  Go to Communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same (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 myself am convinced by the Petrine claims, nor looking around the world does there seem
  much doubt which (if Christianity is true) is the True Church, the temple of the Spirit dying but 

  living, corrupt but holy, self-reforming and rearising. But for me that Church of which the Pope is
  the acknowledged head on earth has as chief claim that it is the one that has (and still does) ever
  defended the Blessed Sacrament, and given it most honour, and put it (as Christ plainly intended) in
  the prime place. ‘Feed my sheep’ was His last charge to St Peter; and since His words are always
  first to be understood literally, I suppose them to refer primarily to the Bread of Life. It was against
  this that the W. European revolt (or Reformation) was really launched – ‘the blasphemous fable of
  the Mass’ – and faith/works a mere red herring. I suppose the greatest reform of our time was that
  carried out by St Pius X: surpassing anything, however needed, that the Council will achieve. I wonder what state the Church would now be but for it.

  This is rather an alarming and rambling disquisition to write! It is not meant to be a sermon! I
  have no doubt that you know as much and more. I am an ignorant man, but also a lonely one. And I
  take the opportunity of a talk, which I am sure I should now never take by word of mouth. But, of
  course, I live in anxiety concerning my children: who in this harder crueller and more mocking
  world into which I have survived must suffer more assaults than I have. But I am one who came up
  out of Egypt, and pray God none of my seed shall return thither. I witnessed (half-comprehending)
  the heroic sufferings and early death in extreme poverty of my mother who brought me into the
  Church; and received the astonishing charity of Francis Morgan.

  But I fell in love with the Blessed Sacrament from the beginning – and by the mercy of God never have fallen out again: but alas! I
  indeed did not live up to it. I brought you all up ill and talked to you too little. Out of wickedness
  and sloth I almost ceased to practise my religion – especially at Leeds, and at 22 Northmoor Road.
  Not for me the Hound of Heaven, but the never-ceasing silent appeal of Tabernacle, and the sense
  of starving hunger. I regret those days bitterly (and suffer for them with such patience as I can be
  given); most of all because I failed as a father. Now I pray for you all, unceasingly, that the Healer
  (the Hælend as the Saviour was usually called in Old English) shall heal my defects, and that none
  of you shall ever cease to cry Benedictus qui venit in nomme Domini.”

  Anyways, I thought it good, fatherly advice for Lent. God bless you all! Sorry if the formatting is a bit off; I was copying and pasting from a .pdf!

  • 11:31 pm
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