Gollum

 Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gollum (aka Smeagol)

    Many of you know how much I love the “Lord of the Rings” Trilogy.  And in the Trilogy there is an intriguing character named Gollum (also called Smeagol).  When he was younger he went by the name Smeagol, and he was one of the river folk, not unlike a hobbit.  But then he killed his brother, who had found the Ring of Power (an evil talisman), and then was banished to live on his own.  During this exile, he used the name Gollum, reflecting his change from a good-hearted lad to a man closed in on his desire for the Ring.  Eventually Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, takes the ring from him, which he later gives to his nephew, Frodo.  Gollum, still closed in on his desire for the Ring, which he treasures above all things, seeks out Frodo to take the Ring back.
    J.R.R. Tolkien, the author, was a man throughly surrounded by his Catholic faith.  And so you see signs of the Catholicism throughout his work, and the screen adaptations that followed much later.  The Ring, as something evil, can be seen as a cross, as Frodo, who is one Christ-figure, carries it to Mount Doom.  Gollum can easily be understood as what happens when one closes oneself in on evil desires and on oneself.  
    I bring this up because in our Gospel today, Jesus cures a deaf man with a speech impediment.  Imagine being deaf and mute during the time of Jesus: it was a life in many ways, closed in on oneself, not because of sin, but because of the lack of ability to communicate in any great way with the outside world.  Indeed, it is the man’s friends who bring him to Jesus.  And Jesus, to heal him, says to the man, “‘Be opened!’”  Jesus opens this man up to new life, especially physically, as his ears are opened and his speech impediment removed, but even interiorly, to the life of grace.  
    God wants us to be open to His grace and His life which He desires would flow through us like a spring of water.  The life of grace irrigates the desert of life that is ours when we are closed in on ourselves and our desire for sin.  Grace makes us more alive, and allows us to interact with the world in new and spectacular ways.
    Tolkien depicts this in the person of Gollum.  As Gollum tries to steal the Ring, Frodo catches him, and slowly wins Gollum’s trust, even calling him by his old name, Smeagol.  As this happens, Smeagol is re-created, and becomes not a wretched, hacking despicable creature, but a joyful, fun, and even serving individual.  Even Frodo’s choice of a new name, really the original name, is a return to Smeagol’s original youth and innocence, before he was corrupted by the evil Ring and turned in on himself.  Frodo, again, a Christ-figure, is the one who frees Smeagol from his past darkness and restores him to the light.
    Sin turns us toward ourselves and away from God.  While we have a specific sin of selfishness, every sin is selfish.  Love is selfless, and so as we serve God we become less concerned about ourselves and more concerned about others.  Sin, which is opposed to God, is therefore opposed to love of others and cares only for the self, which makes one a shadow of how God created us, and exiles us from God, from others, and even from our true self.  Think about any sin, and you can see the effects of selfishness in it.  Greed is fairly obvious, and we care more for money than God; pride is where we care more for ourselves than for God and others; hatred is where we are more concerned with our injuries caused by others and getting back at them (thus, making us feel good because we got our revenge), rather than being concerned about forgiving the others; lust seeks to use the other person for our own sexual desires and pleasure, whether that person physically close to us or on a screen.  Even smaller sins like gossip are about making sure that we are in control of a narrative, or even that we attempt to make ourselves look better by putting others down.  In all those sins and more, we are closed in on ourselves rather than being open, first and foremost to God, and then also to the people He loves, our fellow human beings.
    Jesus wants to open us up.  He desires a fuller life for us than we can provide when we only concentrate on ourselves.  But the choice to accept God’s grace to open rests with us.  God’s grace always does the first and most important work, but our response is also part of the process.  We have to come to God, or our friends need to bring us to Him.  
    But Smeagol also serves as a good warning, that this process of being opened to God is not a once-for-all event; the choice to allow God to open us is a choice we need to make every day.  Smeagol, who later (wrongly) feels betrayed by Frodo, reverts to his old self.  He turns back in on himself and on his desire for the evil Ring consumes him again, eventually leading to his demise.  So for us, each day we have the choice to open ourselves to God or not; to be a desert and burning sands, or a stream and spring of water.  Ephphatha!  Be opened!