A Pastor’s Thoughts: ‘The source of our story’

[By Fr. Jim Muscatella, Blessed Trinity & St. Patrick’s Parishes]

One cold January night, the priests of Tioga County stepped out into the darkness and drove off east. The route towards Binghamton was not unfamiliar: we often take to those highways – sometimes with considerable determination and urgency – bearing the offer of God’s grace to bedside, hospital rooms, and nursing homes.

On this particular Friday, our car rode out into the night on a less weighty, but certainly worthy, adventure. Our destination was not a crisis, but a celebration – the 25th anniversary screening of Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.”

The Lord of the Rings movies are favorites of Father Galens and I – but they are more than just good fantasy films: they are beautiful retellings of J.R.R. Tolkien’s own masterpiece literary work. Tolkien’s three-part novel is so superb that Father Galens has imposed a rule on himself – any time he watches the Jackson films, my pastor must re-read the novel as an act of literary devotion; confronted with inspiring beauty, Fr. Galens finds himself convicted to return to the source.

Following his cue, I began to read the novel myself. I realized then that the mastery of Tolkien’s story craft does more than just draw you in – like all works of beauty, it moves you. Every source of inspiration sends us seeking further. Every lively tale sends living hearts out and upstream, in search of what must be a powerful source – our wonder makes us quest after inspiration.

In a letter to his adult son, an aging Tolkien identifies his own inspiration poetically: “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 on earth…”

The Blessed Sacrament, or the Eucharist (“Gratitude”), stands central not only to Tolkien’s genius but to the entire Christian story of grace and salvation. Christ entrusted His Apostles with a mission – to preside at baptisms, confessions, and Holy Mass  – so that through these visible signs, these sacraments, we might recognize Our God at work and His grace on offer. The great life-giving presence of Jesus Christ, offered to us in the Consecrated Host and Chalice at every Mass, calls out to us still.

In sin, humanity strayed far from God; at Holy Mass, God brings Himself near to us. He meets us, under the appearance of life-giving bread and joy-giving wine, to sustain us and inspire us. The source of our salvation is brought tangibly before our eyes, hands, and tongues – our lives now fittingly can become stories of gratitude and grace.  

We who adore that Great Story Teller are called so we might be sent; we receive His offer and then become His offerings and invitations to the world. The Lord meets us with His life – so that our lives, once dead in sin, might be brought back to life. We become masterfully told stories of His work.

We are not without inspiration. One young woman had her heart set constantly on returning in adoration (often hours daily) to Christ present in the Eucharist. From prayer, that Mother Teresa sprang forth with an inspired love that always turned to the desperately needy – those in debilitating illness, abject poverty, and nearly forgotten at the point of death – seeing in all of them the image and likeness of the One whom she adored in the Eucharist. In a Nazi concentration camp, a Polish priest courageously called out, offering himself up for death in the place of a stranger. That Father Maximilian Kolbe could stand firm unto death because he knew the source of his strength; Kolbe called out not only in that moment but by his whole life so that we might recognize what this heroic saint heralded in his life as “the greatest power in the universe” – and adore the God who, adoring us, inspires all true human greatness. 

Christ, powerfully present in mystery in the Blessed Sacrament, inspires us to learn to live truly: may our lives become stories of God’s goodness.