LR1 A Lord of the Rings Spiritual Retreat with Fr. Timothy Gallagher

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We begin the series with a look at the spiritual life of J.R.R. Tolkien. From his letters we learn how his Catholic faith, and in particular his devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, is a significant influence in his life and in the writing of “The Lord of the Rings.”

142 To Robert Murray, SJ. 2 December 1953 76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford

I think I know exactly what you mean by the order of Grace; and of course by your references to Our Lady, upon which all my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded. The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.

Father Timothy M. Gallagher, O.M.V., was ordained in 1979 as a member of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, a religious community dedicated to retreats and spiritual formation according to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Fr. Gallagher is featured on the EWTN series “Living the Discerning Life: The Spiritual Teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola”.