Advent’s “O Antiphons,” like the snow, return annually, always fresh. They call us to renew the faith that animates Europe’s beating heart.

Without the root of prayer, Europe is like a drowning museum and a place of cynical intrigue, but at prayer Europe is in the fight of her life—where darkness and collapse beckon the annihilation of identity. In such times, civilisations require saints.

When I first heard Elendil’s line in the third teaser trailer, “The past is dead, we either move forward or die with it,” I became fixated with the whole carnival surrounding Amazon’s billion dollar creative venture—how could it be that J.R.R. Tolkien, a Tridentine-Mass-loving skeptic of modernity was providing the aesthetic and imaginative fuel of woke intersectionalists and activist ideologues in Hollywood?

Tolkien maintained a great Marian piety throughout his lifetime. Indeed, he said that his entire vision of beauty was grounded in the simplicity and magnificence of the Mother of God.