Monday, December 26, 2022

Advice From Tolkien and St. Benedict

In an essay by Julian Kwasniewski loaded with excellent pull-quotes from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, a couple of items stand out.

First is the reality-check for the New World Order bunch, (who will nonetheless continue on their path to 'save the world'):

...“Yet also I should be sad,” said Théoden. “For however the fortune of war shall go, may it not so end that much that was fair and wonderful shall pass for ever out of Middle-earth?” “It may,” said Gandalf. “The evil of Sauron cannot be wholly cured, nor made as if it had not been. But to such days we are doomed." ...

They won't save the worldDoh.

Next, Gandalf tells us what we ought to do:

...Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule....

You never give up, even when you know that 'the evil cannot be wholly cured.'

He means exactly what St. Benedict's motto says:  Ora et Labora!

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