Lord of the Rings ... is the most sacramental work of literature I've come across yet. J.R.R.Tolkien went to Mass daily and it changed the way he viewed the world and as a result it changed his world and as a result he changed the world.
... Andrew Preslar at Called to Communion has written a fascinating essay on sacramentality in The Lord of the Rings. This quote stands out:
For me, the greatest virtues of The Lord of the Rings are its capacities to awaken longing for the ineffable, and to deliver an astoundingly satisfying happy ending, which nevertheless refuses (truthfully and artistically) to pose as ultimate, and even refuses to be the actual ending of the book. This is quite moving. We are not left with just the longing, which leads (at best) to romanticizing sadness, which is a kind of embalming of the present. Nor are we left with a false triumphalism, wherein we convince ourselves that all our desires have been satisfied, which leads to shallow complacency. We are left to hope for something more.
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