. . . We are caught up on this same road. Whether we know it or not, whether we accept it or not, our entire life as individuals and as a Catholic community comes down to one crucial element: we are either instruments for the proliferation of evil or instruments for its defeat. None of the petty squabbles, devastating scandals, and addictive diversions that muddle us in the muck on this long, long road will come to mean very much in the end. We are instruments, and instruments of what depends entirely on our response to grace. This is the tale of The Lord of the Rings. J.R.R.Tolkien brings his characters again and again to the very brink of hopelessness, only to teach them - and us - that there is always hope. We cannot accept that there was, and is, a Christ without accepting that one true fact. To be without hope means to admit there is no grace at work in the world, and that is simply pointless, and demonstrably untrue. . . .