Sauron is defeated

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March 25, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth: Sauron is defeated. The Ring of Power tumbles into the fiery bowels of Mount Doom along with the betrayer, Gollum - who made the mistake of thinking he owned it, when it owned him all along.

Tolkien based his Ring of Power partly on the Ring of Gyges mentioned by Plato in Book 2 of the Republic. In Plato’s story, this magical ring gives its owner the power of invisibility: but much more than that, too, because if you have the power of invisibility, you have the power to do whatever you want - and never get caught. The power of a god! In fact, Gyges was a real person, the King of Lydia, and Plato says that one of his ancestors used the ring to seduce the queen and kill the old king, so that he could become king himself.

The point is this: is morality just a fear of getting caught? If you could get away with doing anything, would you? Does our life really just come down to using whatever power we can to get what we want? Or is there really such a thing as justice and goodness, beyond just exercising power and control?

Tolkien’s ring magnifies the power of the ring of Gyges. As well as invisibility, and the power that gives to do whatever you want, it brings absolute power and rule over the whole of Middle Earth. And like the ring of Gyges, this brings a dilemma, a temptation, even: in the hands of someone just and true, the power of the ring could be used for great good… But Gandalf, for instance, won’t even touch it, because he knows that that kind of power always corrupts the people who hold it. Just look at what happened to Gollum: far from a master, he becomes a shadow of a person, a complete slave to his desire.

This takes us back to the beginning of Lent, and Jesus’ third temptation in the wilderness: the Devil offers him the world, if he will only bend the knee. If you’re a Star Wars fan, you’ll remember the moment when Darth Vader offers Luke Skywalker the chance to end destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy, to rule the galaxy together as father and son. It’s always the same old temptation: the pride of thinking that we can do a better job.

This takes us back further, to the fundamental temptation and the foundational object of the Christian story: the apple in Genesis 3, which Adam and Eve took from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Remember what the serpent said: “in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” In other words, you won’t need God’s law, God’s goodness any more: you will be able to make up good and evil for yourselves, you will be totally free, you will have power: the power of gods.

Back to the Ring of Power: it’s a type of the apple in Genesis. But like the power of the Ring, the power behind the apple, the power of the serpent, will ultimately be destroyed. Straight after Adam and Eve eat the apple, God tells the serpent, the “seed” or descendent of Eve “shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”

It’s no coincidence that Tolkien, a devout Catholic, chose March 25th as the day for Sauron’s defeat; because it is on March 25, exactly nine months before Christmas, that the Church celebrates the day of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel brought tidings to the Blessed Virgin Mary that she would bear the Son of God.

This is the day when by hearing the Word and receiving Spirit of God, Mary conceives the living Wisdom of God Incarnate in her womb. The Incarnation begins not at Christmas, but today. This is the day when the Evil One is put to rout, when he knows the war is lost, and it doesn’t start with war and violence, but with a young girl’s words: Mary’s fiat, her “let it be to me according to thy word,” her consent to the suffering that all mothers know in childbirth, but more, to seeing her own Son suffer and die, as on the Cross he crushes the serpent’s head — but not before it bites his heel.

And so, this day of the Annunciation, Mary shows that true power lies in no rings or apples, in choosing good and evil for ourselves, but in submission and in service to the Divine wisdom and goodness. In this, she becomes a new Eve, and Our Lord a new Adam, who follows her example, and yields his will to that of the Father, his freedom for the life of the world. By the wood of the Cross He turns the Tree that brought us the apple of sin and death into the tree of eternal life.

The war is over, the enemy routed, but, as C.S. Lewis put it, we are still stuck behind enemy lines. There is, obviously, still evil in this world. The question for us is, what do we do about it? Do we grasp the Ring, take power into our own hands, make up our own good and evil, get what we want however we can as long as we can get away with it, force the world into our perfect idea of it by violence and power? Or, like Mary, do we say “yes” to God, to the real Divine Power of goodness, truth, beauty, and wisdom - to the self-giving power of a mother’s love?