Going to Mass with Tolkien

However, he strongly disliked the vernacular and, to the embarrassment of his grandson, continued to loudly answer the Mass in Latin.

From Aleteia

By Joseph Pearce

The way the 'Lord of the Rings' author speaks of prayer and liturgy will inspire you and give you some ideas to incorporate in your own prayer life!

It’s been 10 years since an Italian priest called for the cause for J.R.R. Tolkien’s canonization to be initiated. Back in 2015, Father Daniele Ercoli of Turin asked Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham to begin the canonization process. Two years later a special Mass was celebrated at the church in Oxford at which Tolkien attended daily Mass. In the following year, a “canonization conference” was held in Oxford with the aim of revitalizing interest in the calls for the great author’s cause to be initiated by the Church. Since then, very little seems to have happened to reinvigorate the cause. Now, a newly published book is drawing attention to Tolkien’s personal sanctity and devout practice of the Faith.

The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination by Ben Reinhard focuses on Tolkien’s love for the Mass and its impact on the writing of The Lord of the Rings. 

“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work,” Tolkien insisted. Dr. Reinhard reminds us that the word “fundamentally” is derived from the Latin fundamentum which means “foundation” or “foundational.” In other words, Tolkien is saying that his Catholic faith is the very foundation of his work. This should not be surprising because it was the very foundation of Tolkien’s life.

Never need for words of joy

When Tolkien’s friend, Father Robert Murray, a Jesuit priest, saw similarities between Galadriel and the Blessed Virgin Mary, Tolkien was quick to agree with him. “I know exactly what you mean … by your reference to Our Lady, upon which all my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded.”

In a letter to his son, he urged him to always remain devout in the practice of the Faith, to frequent the sacraments, especially confession, and to pray earnestly and often. “Pray on your feet, in cars, in blank moments of boredom.” As for Tolkien’s own prayer life, he described it vividly in the same letter:

If you don’t do so already, make a habit of the ‘praises.’ I use them much (in Latin): the Gloria Patri, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Laudate Dominum; the Laudate Pueri Dominum (of which I am specially fond), one of the Sunday psalms; and the Magnificat; also the Litany of Loreto (with the prayer Sub tuum praesidium). If you have these by heart you never need for words of joy. It is also a good and admirable thing to know by heart the Canon of the Mass, for you can say this in your heart if ever hard circumstance keeps you from hearing Mass.

This candid expression of Tolkien’s joy-filled prayer life found expression foundationally in his work. “Tolkien’s life and imagination, were fundamentally grounded in the liturgy,” writes Dr. Reinhard. “His joys and sorrows, art and imagination – indeed, every human activity – could be grounded in and interpreted through the prayer of the Church.”

On a tour of Italy with his daughter, Tolkien had an overwhelming sense that he had arrived at “the heart of Christendom”: “I felt a curious glow of dormant life and Charity – especially in the chapels of the Blessed Sacrament.”

Can we always go to church with him?

Perhaps the sweetest and cutest illustration of Tolkien’s love for the liturgy and his love of children is given by a friend who had attended Mass with him. In the pew in front of them were two or three children struggling to follow the Mass in their picture-missal. Noticing their difficulty, Tolkien leaned forward to help guide them through the Mass. When his friend left the church after Mass, he noticed that Tolkien was not with him. Returning into the church, the friend “found him kneeling in front of the Lady Altar with the young children and their mother talking happily and I think telling stories about Our Lady.” As the family left the church, Tolkien’s friend overheard one of the children ask, “Mummy, can we always go to church with that nice man?”

As for Tolkien’s own love of the Mass, it is shown in the words he wrote to his son illustrating how the Eucharist was at the very centre of his life:

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.

With these words of burning faith and the love of Our Lord echoing in our hearts, as they evidently echoed always in the heart of Tolkien, we might indeed hope and pray that the cause for his canonization will be rekindled.