This Holy Week, for my inner nourishment, my plan is to abstain from my usual YouTube and Netflix diet and instead re-watch spiritually literate films. On top of the list is “Fellowship of the Ring,” which I have seen a couple of times before. It was the first installment of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy directed by the talented New Zealander Peter Jackson. As an aside, December of 2023 marked 10 years since the whole world watched “Return of the King,” the last installment of the said trilogy.
Probably you’re wondering why I deem this film to be an appropriate aid for reflection for Holy Week.
To me, “Fellowship of the Ring” is one of the few films that have layers and layers of meanings. Each time you view it, new insights and messages bubble up in the mind.
Although I had read the book by J.J. Tolkien during my college years, my mind was so shallow then, turning the pages without deep interest, regarding it as nothing more than an entertaining fantasy adventure story.
However when I saw the movie based on the book in 2001, I had just turned 60. So I had supposedly a more mature cast of mind. I saw the movie initially as an analogy of what was then happening in our world. It was a troubled year, an annus horribilis. Remember the shock we all felt that fateful day of September 11? It set off wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the aftermath of which still affects us even today.
More than 10 years thereafter, I wish I could say that the world has changed for the better. But the cliché never gets old: the more things change the more they remain the same. We still have “Sarumans” and “Saurons” in our world who embrace the dark powers, driven by greed for absolute power and dominion over others, represented by the “one ring to rule them all.”
When I watched it again five years ago, I was more spiritually mature and I found it rich in Christian elements. There are motifs of light, hope, self-sacrifice, repentance, and redemptive suffering. Frodo, the primary character, is to me a Christ-like figure that carries the heavy burden of fulfilling his destined task and thus save Middle Earth from the dark powers. Frodo was constantly hounded by a totally depraved creature called Gollum who almost succeeded at one point in tempting Frodo to stray from the path. It’s as if Tolkien had in mind Jesus in the wilderness where the demon tried to break him when he was at his weakest point.
Midpoint in the film, we see the wizard Gandalf go down to his death into the dark abyss and then later he re-appears in later scene but glowing in white light this time, which allude to the resurrection, the conquest of death, which is the foundation of our Christian faith.
But this year, I want to invite you to watch it and focus on the theme of fellowship for your reflection. After all, the whole story revolves around Frodo and his other eight companions who together make up the Fellowship of the Ring. In parallel, Jesus had with him 12 followers as he traveled through Galilee to fulfill his destined mission on earth.
I like to reframe the narrative of “Fellowship of the Ring” as a fellowship of suffering and in suffering.
The film reminds us that we are all bound up in one another. As someone put it very well, “humankind is a collective project.”
Remember the famous words “no man is an island” in John Donne’s poem? It tells us that every time someone gets cut off from the rest of us, humankind becomes smaller.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa once said: “We are made for togetherness, we are made for family, for fellowship, to exist in a tender network of interdependence.” But as Mother Teresa pointed out: “The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.”
Fellowship of suffering means sharing each other’s pain. When one part of humanity is suffering, the rest of us feel it too. This is why we need to stop taking spirit-numbing painkillers that serve to prevent us from feeling the cries of our fellow human beings.
What we need is a spiritual re-wiring that enables us to see one another, in our pain and in our fear, in our sadness and hopelessness and frustrations, and all our dark moments.
My wife who’s in continuous pain because of her arthritic knees is discovering others who have the same health condition, but are enduring it all with equanimity. Indeed, our personal fragility draws us to other elderly people, or at least it should. And recognizing our human fragility and the interconnectedness we share should lead us to develop greater systems of support and care.
In his inspiring book about the power of community “The Amen Effect,” Jewish Rabbi tells us that “our presence when someone is suffering is imbued with a kind of Divinity. Our care and concern, our love, is itself life-affirming.”
We are all part of the mystical body of an all-inclusive Being, who Himself experienced excruciating human suffering and then lifted us up with him.
If we are to remain true to our Christian beliefs, let’s reflect and give life to this tenet of our faith, even if it is the only one we will focus on during the entire season of Lent.
My gentle suggestion is to change our annual Holy Week observance routine this year. Instead of traveling to seven churches and reciting the Stations of the Cross for our “penitencia,” why not visit a sick friend or relative in-person, and sit with those who are carrying a heavy burden, suffering a personal loss, or struggling with pain and sorrow. According to one ascetic in the fourth century, he says that each visit alleviates one-sixtieth of the patient’s pain. (I don’t know about that.)
If we have mobility problems or are bound to our chairs and beds, we can observe fellowship by saying a silent prayer for our fellow sufferers and offering our own drop of personal suffering to become part of humanity’s ocean of pain.
Like Frodo and his companions, let’s all strive to lean on each other, share each other’s pain in a spiritual ring of fellowship to give each other hope even in dark times.
To the dark powers of corruption and greed, let us together utter the thunderous rebuke of Gandalf: “Thou shall not pass.”
In the same way that Holy Week brings us to Resurrection Day on a bright joyful note, the film “Fellowship of the Ring” concludes on a hopeful note, conveyed in the words spoken by Haldir, an Elf-warrior: “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”