Every story features an action, carried out by a protagonist, who is hindered by an antagonist, which makes for an essential conflict, the development and resolution of which constitutes the basic structure of the story. The larger the scope of the action, the more potential a story has for “greatness.” Every human life, on this model, is very much a great story. The individual is the protagonist, and the enemy is death.

J.R.R. Tolkien appreciated the pivotal role of death in a story:

In a private conversation that contributed to the Christian conversion of C. S. Lewis, Tolkien presented Lewis with an understanding of the Gospel of the Incarnation as the “Christian myth.” Tolkien later summarized this conception:

The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels — peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation.¹

Tolkien defined “eucatastrophe” as the opposite of tragedy and the highest function of the fairy-story. It is the “Consolation of the Happy Ending.”² The eucatastrophe is the moment in a story when “we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart’s desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.”³

The Assumption of Enoch was a eucatastrophe in an otherwise monotonous Genesis Chapter Five– “and he died, and he died, and he died,” and on and on until, “and he was not, for God took him.” The feast of St. John the Evangelist serves (in my mind, at least) a similar purpose in the days following Christmas. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is another eucatastrophic glimpse of our heart’s desire. All of this “looks forward, or backward … to the Great Eucatastrophe.”⁴ Victory over death is, of course, the great action of the Gospel story. The protagonist is Almighty God, born of a Virgin. The denouement is the union of man and God in life everlasting.

It is no coincidence that Christmas Day is followed by the feasts of St. Stephen, the Holy Innocents and St. Thomas of Canterbury. The thing about the Gospel is, the death of Christ catches up all of these deaths, and transforms them into vehicles of eternal glory.

Who can count the dust of Jacob, or number the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!

Our priest at St. Basil the Great Ukrainian Catholic Church said that Christmas is like a little Pascha, a winter Easter. The Church Year is in full swing, for Christ is born among us! Epiphany-tide will bring us to Lent, and that is like the life of Christ. Our Lord fasted, therefore, we fast. Our Lord endured death for all, therefore, we can endure our own deaths. Christmastide is a giddy moment in the story, but the conflict still remains, as attested by the commemorations within the octave. Take up your cross and follow Me. Christ did not suffer and die so that we would not have to suffer and die.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city….

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.

The Resurrection has been accomplished. But the Resurrection is not already past. Therefore, let us have hope, and be vigilant. The Norsemen and Anglo-Saxons who inspired Tolkien were not afraid of a good death. No one need fear a good death. This too, is of the Eucatastrophe. Like so much else in our faith, death has become something of a paradox. It is not desired for its own sake, but we would gladly embrace it, like so many who have gone before us, for the sake of the testimony of the Gospel, that is, for the sake of Christ, in the hope of a better resurrection. Those little babies slain by Herod will rise up in the resurrection of the dead, and proclaim the name of their Saviour, Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords.

O God, whose praise the martyed Innocents on this day confessed, not by speaking, but by dying: destroy in us all the evils of sin, that our life also may proclaim by deeds Thy faith which our tongue professes. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

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1. J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories” in Tree and Leaf (London: HarperCollins, 2001), 72. [↩]
2. Ibid., 68. [↩]
3. Ibid., 70. [↩]
4. Ibid., 73. [↩]