The mightiest man

“…may be slain by a single arrow…”

This line from The Lord of the Rings begins one character's account of a great warrior who struggles to protect those entrusted to his care even as he is shot again and again.

When the first of the recent Lord of the Rings films came out, a number of reviewers took note the film’s image of this warrior still standing despite the arrows in his flesh and compared it to a classic image of Christian iconography: the image of St. Sebastian, who is remembered on this day.

All that we really know about Sebastian is that he was a Roman soldier martyred for his Christian faith. The story that came to be told of him was that he was pierced by many arrows and yet continued his work of spreading the good news of Christ until he was finally beaten to death and received a martyr’s crown.