The letters of JRR Tolkien reveal a sharp mind as well as a sharp tongue. They also reveal a man well aware of his shortcomings. Like the father in Mark’s Gospel who cries, ‘Help my lack of faith!’ (Mark 9:24), Tolkien knew that faith can grow and wither, that love can burn and fade.
Indeed, in a letter to his son Michael, Tolkien recalls a time when he nearly lost his faith entirely:
I brought you all up ill and talked to you too little. Out of wickedness and sloth I almost ceased to practise my religion … I regret those days bitterly (and suffer for them with such patience as I can be given); most of all because I failed as a father (Letter 250).
He doesn’t give much away about the exact circumstances of this crisis of faith, except to blame his own faults and his own ‘sloth’. But this passage is part of a lengthy response to his son, who had also admitted to a ‘sagging faith’.
The letter is a tender one, reflecting on how faith can grow and thrive, even in a broken Church. Tolkien explains that faith, ultimately, is ‘an act of will, inspired by love’, and therefore deeply personal. He concedes that ‘love may be chilled and our will eroded by the spectacle of the shortcomings, folly, and even sins of the Church,’ but he is also aware of how often we look for scapegoats, blaming others for our own responsibilities.
Faith is not a single moment of decision, he writes, but requires perseverance. We need to decide on faith every single day; it requires constant attention and renewal. While we shouldn’t ignore the brokenness of the Church, we also need to cultivate the kind of self-knowledge that allows us to look honestly and unflinchingly at ourselves, admitting that we all share that same brokenness:
The temptation to ‘unbelief’ (which really means rejection of Our Lord and His claims) is always there within us. Part of us longs to find an excuse for it outside us.
For this reason, Tolkien could blame nobody but himself for that time when his faith waned. This contrition was the fruit of honest, humble introspection—the kind advocated by St Claude La Colombière, who observed that ‘Truly humble people are never scandlised: they know their own weakness too well.’
But what was it, in the end, that drew him back?
‘Not for me the Hound of Heaven,’ Tolkien writes, alluding to Francis Thompson’s famous poem about God’s relentless pursuit of his creation, ‘but the never-ceasing silent appeal of Tabernacle, and the sense of starving hunger.’
From a young age, Tolkien was given over to the care of the Birmingham Oratory, a religious community founded by St John Henry Newman. There he was looked after by Fr Francis Morgan, who influenced him profoundly.
An even more profound influence, though, was the Eucharist: ‘I fell in love with the Blessed Sacrament from the beginning—and by the mercy of God never have fallen out again: but alas! I indeed did not live up to it.’
For Tolkien, to loose faith was to ‘deny the Blessed Sacrament, that is: to call Our Lord a fraud to His face.’ It was his enduring love of the Eucharist—his first great love—that pulled him back from the brink of faithlessness. As the living presence of Jesus, the Bread of Life, only the Eucharist could feed the starving hunger that he carried deep inside—that we all carry deep inside.
Just as we all share brokenness and frailty, we also share this starving hunger: a hunger for the divine.
The quiet appeal of the Blessed Sacrament drew Tolkien back, and this love for the Eucharist would also inspire him to write, in another letter:
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 upon earth (Letter 43).
Sometimes we’re not aware of what we truly need until we slow down enough to feel that need, to think deeply about who we are, where we have come from and why we walk this earth. With the help of God’s grace—and perhaps the example of Tolkien—may we also come to sense this starving hunger inside of ourselves, and to know how Jesus longs to feed us with the food that endures for eternal life (John 6:27).
If you would like to return to Mass or find somewhere to take part in Eucharistic adoration, feel free to reach out and we can help connect you.
All quotations are from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter (2006).