Video – Tolkien, Chesterton and Lent – CONF 318

Ave Maria!

Fr. John Hollowell gives the final talk for the 2016 Lenten Day of Reflection here at the Mother of the Redeemer Retreat Center. He continues on his first two talks on the Stations of the Cross from St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI and now how these can be lived in our everyday lives by seeing how two great Catholics authors, J. R. R. Tolkien and G. K. Chesterton, integrated them in the epic books they wrote and specifically how God can make good out of evil.

• J. R. R. Tolkien - how we are co-creators with God especially in regard to raising children but also to raising people's spirits in times of difficulty.


• G. K. Chesterton - Influence of Catholicism on a joyous, inspired culture, contrary to idea that a penitential life is repressive.


• Fenced in playgrounds let children play without restraint.


• JPII - Phenomenology, start with observation and move to discovering what is true.


• Chesterton - there is nothing more dramatic than orthodoxy.


• It is sane to look for an explanation of suffering and even celebrate it.


• Need contrasting darkness to see the brightness.


• Fasting builds the appetite.


• In Catholicism fasting leads to feasting.


• Need to have balance, be a billboard for balance.


• Catholicism has crusty outside but is filled with joy.


• World is the opposite, feast without the fast. Does not work


• What are you creating or sub-creating in the world?


• What will we be looking back on as a legacy at the end of our lives?


• The world encourages us to become like machines, efficiency is considered all important


• Are we able to enjoy Sunday, too relax?


• Only the strong are able to be idle the weak and the sick can not do that.


• Movies Protestants have made many that are force fitting preaching into art.


• Fanatical and even suicidal element to most protestant movements, fasting without the feasting


• Modern world is without contrast and bland, every day is the same


• Fridays are for suffering that leads the feast of Sunday, We must celebrate and embrace both and invite others to do so.


• See the suffering in Christ on Good Friday to appreciate the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.

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