Fr. Longenecker on Bilbo Baggins and All the Saints

"C.S.Lewis once observed, 'How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints!' Therese of Lisieux wrote, 'All the saints will be indebted to each other . . . Who knows the joy we shall experience in beholding the glory of the great saints and knowing that by a secret disposition of Providence we have contributed there unto . . . and do you not think that on their side the great saints, seeing what they owe to quite little souls, will love them with an incomparable love? Delightful and surprising will be the friendships found there - I am sure of it. The favored companion of an Apostle or a great doctor of the Church will perhaps be a young shepherd lad; and a simple little child may be the intimate friend of a patriarch.'

"I wonder, for instance, what sort of interesting conversation the little shepherd lad of Fatima is having with John Paul the Great, or what kind of friendship does Therese of Lisieux have with St Benedict? . . .

"What got me thinking again about the great variety of the saints was the celebration today of All Saints.

I sense them gathered around as a huge extended family from every nation, language and tribe. It is a vision recorded in the Book of Revelation, but it also seems to me a bit like that scene in Lord of the Rings where Bilbo has his final birthday party. All are safely gathered in. There is feasting and rejoicing of the kind you can only find in joyous family gatherings. All Saints Day is as solemn as a royal wedding and as raucous as a children's party. . . ."

In a recent commentary, Father Dwight Longenecker (parish priest at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church, Greenville, SC) reflected on the similarity of the gathering of the saints in Heaven with Bilbo Baggins' eleventy eleventh birthday party in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring.

To access Fr. Longenecker's complete post, please visit:

Fr. Dwight Longenecker: Bilbo Baggins and All the Saints (1 NOV 20)

Background information:

Dwight Longenecker - Catholic priest and author