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Tolkien – his roots and faith (and some huge concerns!)

https://www.incpu.org/Tolkien1.htm
https://www.incpu.org/Tolkien1.pdf

 

Quotes of Tolkien to add insight to his stories – and his Catholic/Jesuit roots… See for yourself below.


“Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world.”
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/j_r_r_tolkien

“Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.”
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/j_r_r_tolkien

“Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.”
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/j_r_r_tolkien

“The greatest adventure is what lies ahead. 
Today and tomorrow are yet to be said. 
The chances, the changes are all yours to make. 
The mold of your life is in your hands to break.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“The birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus means that one day everything sad will come untrue.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“The chief purpose of life, for any of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“There are truths, that are beyond us, transcendent truths, about beauty, truth, honor, etc. There are truths that man knows exist, but they cannot be seen - they are immaterial, but no less real, to us. It is only through the language of myth that we can speak of these truths.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“The Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest Fairy Story — and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
 J.R.R. Tolkien

“Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate
And though I oft have passed them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.”
 J.R.R. Tolkien

“No half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

 

Article from a Catholic Magazine online:

“Many of you are aware that J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, was a faithful Catholic.

I’ve often seen quotes on Facebook attributed to him without knowing if they were genuine. Turns out they were.
Here are three quotes from Tolkien on the Pope and the Church, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and The Eucharist….”
“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 re-arising.


“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 (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.”
>> Can be found in Tolkien: Man and Myth, p. 193.

“I think I know exactly what you mean by the order of Grace; and of course by your references to Our Lady, upon which all my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded.”
>> Can be found in The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The Lord of the Rings, p. 76.

“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. . . . There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death.

“By the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste—or foretaste—of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man’s heart desires.

“The only cure for sagging or 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.”
>> Can be found in The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The Lord of the Rings, p. 219.

--- End of article. Quoted from this source:

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/jrr-tolkien-three-amazing-quotes

Another article: 
“It is well known that J.R.R. Tolkien, the celebrated fantasy writer who gave us The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, was a Catholic. He was not a writer who just happened to be also a Catholic; he was a writer whose Catholicism permeated his work….”

--- End of article. Quoted from this source:

https://catholicism.org/jrr-tolkien-and-the-eucharist.html

Also noted Tolkien’s very deep Catholic roots in this Catholic article:
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/josephpearce/the-catholic-genius-of-j.r.r.-tolkien

One last quote of Tolkien himself:
“I am a Christian and indeed a Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’ — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.”
J. R. R. Tolkien

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Tolkien was indeed a Catholic mystic – meaning, he was a Jesuit.