The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien

From a letter to Michael Tolkien (age 20),  6-8 March 1941

I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. [...] There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires.

—The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien, No. 43.