Last night in the midst of brushing my teeth before bed, I had an epiphany. "The elven waybread is the Eucharist!"
I don't know where that even came from, as I was not even thinking about the Lord of the Rings.
As a fan of the Lord of the Rings, I love to find little gems in the book that relate to the faith. Well, this is one I missed. It took becoming a Catholic to see it. But wow it fits so well! Galadriel even gives the "lembas" to them, which points us to the Blessed Virgin Mary who gives us Jesus in the Eucharist.
They must only eat quite small pieces of the bread to become full, and the bread lasts and lasts on their journey. The bread also has special properties (if I remember correctly) where it's potency grows the more it is relied on as a food source. All these have obvious parallels to the receiving of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ in the Eucharist.
Now I will go look online and type in "elven waybread Eucharist" into google and I am sure this has already been discovered by others. But I feel good that I got to have that "aha!" moment with this one. Very cool indeed. What an incredibly rich story the LOTR is!
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Elven Waybread is the Eucharist!
Last night in the midst of brushing my teeth before bed, I had an epiphany. "The elven waybread is the Eucharist!"
I don't know where that even came from, as I was not even thinking about the Lord of the Rings.
As a fan of the Lord of the Rings, I love to find little gems in the book that relate to the faith. Well, this is one I missed. It took becoming a Catholic to see it. But wow it fits so well! Galadriel even gives the "lembas" to them, which points us to the Blessed Virgin Mary who gives us Jesus in the Eucharist.
They must only eat quite small pieces of the bread to become full, and the bread lasts and lasts on their journey. The bread also has special properties (if I remember correctly) where it's potency grows the more it is relied on as a food source. All these have obvious parallels to the receiving of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ in the Eucharist.
Now I will go look online and type in "elven waybread Eucharist" into google and I am sure this has already been discovered by others. But I feel good that I got to have that "aha!" moment with this one. Very cool indeed. What an incredibly rich story the LOTR is!
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Fantastic. I sent this to my daughter (16), a huge LOTR fan, who replied "I had that same epiphany last year!" -- I briefly felt dejected that she figured that out first, and then realized - how awesome is it that my daughter is recognizing these connections so much sooner than I did! :)
ReplyDeleteMy pastor preached about this a few years ago on the feast of Corpus Christi. It was one of the best Homilies he has ever given.
ReplyDeleteI know I have heard Peter Kreeft mention this before. He speaks and writes a lot about LOTR. I read his book, "The Philosophy of Tolkien: The world view behind the Lord of the Rings" and listened to a couple of his lectures (links to both below)that focused on the classic books and it made the movies, and books, so much better.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Tolkien-Worldview-Behind-Rings/dp/1586170252/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio.htm