Feeding and Loving

via St. Patrick's Church (New Orleans) ^ | J. R. R. Tolkein

[Askel5]

FEEDING AND LOVING
J. R. R. Tolkein

J. R. R. Tolkein († 1973) was a fervent Catholic and a British author who taught at Oxford University

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, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends all life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships 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: 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 the 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 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.)

[narses]

What a magnificent piece. Thank you!

[narses]

Ping.

[Domestic Church]

Good medicine for our hearts these days!

[livius]

This is a great little piece! Even though I now feel I have to block out about 75% of what's going on around me - not the "tasteless" behavior of the faithful, which obviously offended Tolkien, but the behavior of the priest and the lousy translation of the stripped-down Mass -I still think that when you go up to Communion, you have to say Amen with total assent.

For my part, I always mentally say what I hope I will say in my dying moments, an Eastern Christian prayer: Lord Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner. (BTW, this does not mean that Jesus wasn't the son of God - he wouldn't be called Lord, otherwise; it is a quote from the Gospel story of the blind man.)

[patent]

(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.)

A good point. I go to so many Masses and almost have to physically restrain myself from worrying about everyone else, when I should be so much more focused on the Truth. Thanks for the post.

patent  +AMDG