All tagged Catholicism
The Word on Fire Bible to Become the First Bible Featuring Commentary from JRR Tolkien
This Bible feels very meditative, like a slow walk through the Scriptures. I once read an anecdote about Tolkien in which his friends mentioned that Tolkien couldn’t simply go on a quick walk because he would so frequently stop to point out a particular plant or insect, often stopping altogether when something interested him. This Bible feels a bit like this, in the most delightful way. You can’t just rush through the Scriptures, it’s best to work through them slowly. It feels almost like a long walk through the Sistine Chapel or a forest perhaps.
Tolkien and the Eucharist: “The One Great Thing to Love on Earth"
“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…”
Like Butter Scraped Across Too Much Bread
After carrying it as his own for sixty years, Bilbo has felt the weight and the slow-changing power of the One Ring. As he celebrates his Eleventy-first birthday, he has not aged visibly since he was fifty -- an effect of the Ring that leaves his friends and relatives puzzled (and envious).
At Home in Middle-Earth: Becoming Strongholds of Goodness
This quote has been stuck in my head for some time now (as I'm sure you've noticed since I write about it so often), and it's come to mean quite a lot to me. It's the kind of quote I'd like to paint across a giant canvas and hang above the entry way of my home. Evil things do not come into this home…
How Tolkien's Middle-Earth Introduced Me to Catholicism
Christianity is so thoroughly woven into every aspect of The Lord of the Rings; it must have been written, I had decided, by someone who was thoroughly steeped in Christian truth. I had known he was a Christian, or assumed as much given his themes of redemption and his Christ-like characters. But I had assumed, like me, he was a Protestant Christian.
Tea with... Saint Lucy and My Chemical Romance: Awake & Unafraid
You're probably wondering what an emo album from 2006 and a virgin martyr from the early Christian Church have to do with one another. Though their stories are set nearly two-thousands years and philosophical worlds apart, Saint Lucy and the My Chemical Romance album, The Black Parade, both speak to the power of commitment, perseverance, and a heart on fire for their beliefs.