JRR Tolkien, you may not know, was a devout Catholic, and his faith deeply influenced his work. The Lord of the Rings is imbued with Catholic themes such as the struggle between good and evil, the importance of self-sacrifice, and the power of grace. Tolkien's heroes are often the small and humble who are called to do great things and carry heavy burdens. His world, called Middle-earth, is one that values tradition, ritual, knowledge, virtue, and a proper ordering of things.
Tolkien believed that myths and fairy stories could convey deep spiritual truths. He saw them not as mere escapism, but as a means to connect with reality at a deeper level. You’d be surprised that many young people credit Tolkien as part of their journey home back to the faith. A very good priest friend of mine even told me that he never would have entered seminary, had it not been for Tolkien’s stories.
In one of his essays, Tolkien discusses how stories can invoke real joy within us, particularly through what he called "eucatastrophe," a term he coined for a joyous turn of events that brings unexpected grace and victory over sorrow, failure, and death.
Think of that moment in Les Miserables where the criminal Jean Valjan is arrested for stealing from the Archbishop. And instead of condemning him and demanding back his silver, the Archbishop says no, take the silver, use it to begin a new life dedicated to grace. The unexpected act of mercy bought his soul for God.
Or think of those old pictures of the Allied forces, rolling in to liberate those concentration camps, and the jubilation that came after those months of starvation and impending doom.
Or a few years ago, remember, the miraculous rescue of those 33 miners trapped underground for 70 days in Chile brought the world together in a shared experience of relief and jubilation.
We love these types of stories. They exemplify what Tolkien called eucatastrophe—the triumph of goodness that we didn't see coming, which sparks profound joy.
Did you catch the eucatastrophe in our first reading today?
Our first reading today mirrors this concept. Despite continuous warnings, the people of Judah persisted in their infidelity, leading to the destruction of Jerusalem and their exile to Babylon—a direct result of their defiance against God. It was a desperate situation, one they had brought upon themselves, threatening the very existence of their civilization.
But then, the miraculous turn: God moves the heart of King Cyrus to allow the Jews to return to their homeland. And this of course brought profoundest joy.
The Jews knew they were lost, they were beaten, and they were totally at the mercy of their captors. They could not save themselves.
But in his mercy, and fidelity to the promises that HE had made, God saves them. Because God is faithful even when we are unfaithful and undeserving. And that is the cause of our joy.
This narrative found in Chronicles is analogous to humanity's state before Christ. We were in exile, a predicament of our own making. Despite warnings, we sinned. The ripple effects of our sins damaged our minds, bodies, and souls, deserving eternal separation from God. We deserved hell for our sins—endless sorrow of being excluded from God’s presence for all eternity, the knowledge that its duration would continue forever without possibility of rest, the knowledge that it could have been otherwise had we remained faithful, and the understanding that our punishment was entirely our own fault.
But then the joyous eucatastrophe--the greatest unexpected grace: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.
The joy of the Christian life does not come from the fact that God has freed us from our earthly sufferings—each one of us here still suffers. Evil bombards us.
Rather, the joy of the Christian life is the experience of salvation—the knowledge and understanding that we have been saved by Jesus Christ when we were deserving of hell. And from experience of salvation blossoms joy that no earthly suffering can diminish—because God’s grace pierces through those evils every time—and shows us the way to heaven.
This is why Christians can experience joy on our death beds. We’re given a diagnosis of terminal cancer, and we can still have joy because we know that God has given us the way to walk through the cancer to eternal life. We can experience joy when we have been stripped of all things, like Jesus stripped of his clothes on calvary. Because it’s not the earthly things that bring us joy, it’s the thing that can’t be taken away, our union with Christ.
And the only reason a Christian can end up in hell is because of his choice to walk away from Christ up to his final breaths—the rejection of the grace of repentance. But we know, that God reaches out to those souls all the time. He brings about eucatastrophes in their lives—unexpected graces—to help them see the light in their darkness.
And this is why our penances and prayers, during the season of Lent and throughout the year, are so important. Penances undertaken on behalf of others cause beams of God’s light to shine into the darkness of their errors and sins. Our prayers whispered to God help them hear God whispering in the depths of their hearts amidst all the noise of the world.
Christians we don’t just do penance and pray without cause, as if we would anger God if we didn’t. God uses our prayers and penances to help save the lost. And that brings us joy, doesn’t it. To know, that our prayer is powerful, our sufferings offered up, are powerful? When we offer up our sufferings in union with Christ, God works.
This is why we are to be generous, lavish, with our Lenten prayer and penance and almsgiving. People say, I don’t like to give anything up for Lent. Fine, we aren’t supposed to necessarily enjoy penance. But those things that you don’t like to do, but you do them anyway because they are the right thing to do, deepen your joy in Christ because you are united to Him in his suffering and in his saving mission.
So let us be generous in our Lenten penances and prayers, offering them up for those who have fallen away from the Church or do not yet know Christ. Our sacrifices, united to His cross, become channels of grace that God can use to work eucatastrophes in their lives.
May the joy of our salvation in Christ pierce through every darkness and lead us and those we pray for to the eternal light of Heaven for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
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