This turned out to be a most appropriate book to read over the Easter Triduum since as Tolkien said, the Resurrection of Jesus after His Passion and Death and Descent among the Dead is the ultimate Eucastrophe, that "sudden joyous turn" (p. 50). Please note that I purchased this book because I'd heard a few segments of the author's discussion of the book on the Son Rise Morning Show. According to the publisher, Emmaus Road in Steubenville, Ohio:
J. R. R. Tolkien famously described The Lord of the Rings as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.” But while these words have been widely and enthusiastically quoted in Catholic studies of Tolkien’s legendarium, readers have not always paid sufficient attention to what Catholic and religious would have meant to Tolkien himself. To do so is to misunderstand the full import of the phrase.
From his childhood as an altar server and “junior inmate” of the Birmingham Oratory to daily Mass with his children as an adult, Tolkien’s Catholic religion was, at its heart, a liturgical affair. To be religious and Catholic in the Tolkienian sense is to be rooted in the prayer of the Church.
The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination takes this claim seriously: The Lord of the Rings (and Tolkien’s myth as a whole) is the product of an imagination seeped in liturgical prayer. In the course of its argument, the Ben Reinhard examines the liturgical pieties that governed Tolkien’s life from childhood to old age, the ways in which the liturgy colored Tolkien’s theory of myth and fantasy, and the alleged absence of religion in Middle-earth. Most importantly, he shows how the plots, themes, and characters of Tolkien’s beloved works can be traced to the patterns of the Church’s liturgical year.
The Table of Contents:
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Loss and Gains
Ira et Studio: A Cautionary Note
Chapter 1: A Liturgical Life
Words of Joy
From Refuge to Trap
The O Oriens and Magnificat: The Liturgical Imagination at Work
Chapter 2: Faerie and Liturgy
The Wonder of Things: Faerie and Mythic Meaning
Eucastrophe and Gloria
Chapter 3: From Daybreak to Evening: Faerie and Liturgical Renewal
Chapter 4: Tolkien's Liturgical Cosmos: The Role of Worship in Middle-Earth
The Fundamental Mythology
Tolkien's Valar and the Cosmic Liturgy
Great Above All Gods: Eru and the Valar
Tolkien, the Valar and the Oratory
Worship in Rivendell: The Case of the Elves
The Holy Mountain: Worship Among Tolkien's Men
The Hobbits' Religious Restoration
Bombadil and the Old Forest
Lothlorien
Initiation and Transformation
Chapter 5: Eala Earendel: Advent, the Calendar, and Tolkien's World
Liturgical Imagination: Tolkien's Medieval Models
The Calendar and Tolkien's Imagination
Soaked with Exile: Adventist Themes in Tolkien
Aiya Earendil Elenion Ancalima
The Bells of Christendom? Christmas in Tolkien's Works
The Ring Goes South: Christmas in Middle Earth?
[NB: The Fellowship of the Ring begins its quest on December 25]
Chapter 6: Paschal Patterns in The Lord of the Rings
Paschal Patterning: What This Chapter is (and Is Not) About
The Journey Through the Desert: The Lenten Quest
From Death to Life
Days of Rejoicing--Eastertide, Ascension, and the Renewed Kingdom
Conclusion
The Horns of Hope: On Tolkien's Achievement
Appendix
The Domestic Church: Family Life and Tolkien's Imagination
"Something of Aeternitas": Tolkien and His Children
"Companions in Shipwreck": Ronald and Edith
Conclusion
Bibliography and Index
One thing I always appreciate in a book is when the author introduces me to an author I did not know before. In this case, Reinhard, Professor of English at Franciscan University of Steubenville, highlights
Father Conrad Pepler, OP, author of
Sacramental Prayer and
Riches Despised: A Study of the Roots of Religion, listed in the Bibliography and cited in the text, and other works (including
The English Religious Heritage).
Reinhard is careful to state his thesis and explore the complexity of Tolkien's own comments about his works, which are sometimes difficult to parse as they can seem contradictory unless one pays special attention to the philologist's word choices. Reinhard helps the reader navigate the paths of mythology, natural theology, and Catholic doctrine, theology, and liturgy in Tolkien's works from Smith of Wootton Major, to The Silmarillion, Sigurd and Gudrun, and of course The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
One of the main themes throughout the book is the loss of enchantment and the connection to nature in our mechanized, materialistic lives today--and indeed how some aspects of the liturgical life of Catholics have not fostered that enchantment and connection since the last decades of the 20th century. Reflecting Tolkien's own regret and even indignation at the changes in liturgy and the liturgical calendar after the Second Vatican Council, Reinhard highlights the loss of Ember and Rogation Days, reflecting the changing of the seasons with fasting, penance, and processions. He cites Pepler, Newman, Bouyer, Lewis, Hopkins, and others to demonstrate the need for these connections to nature and its mysteries, and how Tolkien's work continue to offer us a link to that necessary enchantment and wonder.
One particular Parochial and Plain sermon by Newman, "
The Powers of Nature" serves as a model for this way of thinking about the world around us:
On today's Festival [The feast of Saint Michael the Archangel], it well becomes us to direct our minds to the thought of those Blessed Servants of God, who have never tasted of sin; who are among us, though unseen, ever serving God joyfully on earth as well as in heaven; who minister, through their Maker's condescending will, to the redeemed in Christ, the heirs of salvation.
There have been ages of the world, in which men have thought too much of Angels, and paid them excessive honour; honoured them so perversely as to forget the supreme worship due to Almighty God. This is the sin of a dark age. But the sin of what is called an educated age, such as our own, is just the reverse: to account slightly of them, or not at all; to ascribe all we see around us, not to their agency, but to certain assumed laws of nature. This, I say, is likely to be our sin, in proportion as we are initiated into the learning of this world;—and this is the danger of many (so called) philosophical pursuits, now in fashion, and recommended zealously to the notice of large portions of the community, hitherto strangers to them,—chemistry, geology, and the like; the danger, that is, of resting in things seen, and forgetting unseen things, and our ignorance about them.
I will attempt to say what I mean more at length. The text informs us that Almighty God makes His Angels spirits or winds, and His Ministers a flame of fire. Let us consider what is implied in this.
1. What a number of beautiful and wonderful objects does Nature present on every side of us! and how little we know concerning them! In some indeed we see symptoms of intelligence, and we get to form some idea of what they are. For instance, about brute animals we know little, but still we see they have sense, and we understand that their bodily form which meets the eye is but the index, the outside token of something we do not see. Much more in the case of men: we see them move, speak, and act, and we know that all we see takes place in consequence of their will, because they have a spirit within them, though we do not see it. But why do rivers flow? Why does rain fall? Why does the sun warm us? And the wind, why does it blow? Here our natural reason is at fault; we know, I say, that it is the spirit in man and in beast that makes man and beast move, but reason tells us of no spirit abiding in what is commonly called the natural world, to make it perform its ordinary duties. Of course, it is God's will which sustains it all; so does God's will enable us to move also, yet this does not hinder, but, in one sense we may be truly said to move ourselves: but how do the wind and water, earth and fire, move? . . .
Since Professor Reinhard gave me a new author to explore, cited Newman and many others I have explored, and brought me some wonderful meditations on Tolkien's liturgical imagination during these three great days--filled with mystery, suffering, glory, and angels!--I am grateful.
The High Hallow highlighted many themes in
The Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien works I've neglected for several years. My late husband Mark enjoyed that great trilogy so much!
BTW: There is a
call for the Cause for Tolkien's canonization to be opened. Here's a prayer to that end (for private devotion, of course):
“O Blessed Trinity, we thank You for having graced the Church with John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and for allowing the poetry of Your Creation, the mystery of the Passion of Your Son, and the symphony of the Holy Spirit, to shine through him and his sub-creative imagination. Trusting fully in Your infinite mercy and in the maternal intercession of Mary, he has given us a living image of Jesus the Wisdom of God Incarnate, and has shown us that holiness is the necessary measure of ordinary Christian life and is the way of achieving eternal communion with You. Grant us, by his intercession, and according to Your will, the graces we implore [….], hoping that he will soon be numbered among Your saints. Amen.”