12.20.2013

"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 upon 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.

J.R.R.Tolkien. (Humphrey Carpenter, ed., THE LETTERS OF J.R.R. TOLKIEN London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981 53-54. Print.)