Readings of the day: Wisdom 1:1-7; Psalm 139:1b-3, 4-6, 7-8, 9-10; Luke 17:1-6
In Flanders’ fields the poppies blow
Between the
crosses row on row
That mark our
place.
And in the sky the larks still bravely singing fly,
Scarce heard
amid the guns below.
We are the dead.
Short days ago
We lived, felt
dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were
loved, and now we lie
In Flanders’
fields.
“Loved and were
loved,” the Canadian poet John McCrae described those who gave their lives in
the First World War. “Who love and are loved”: Would this not be an apt
description of all of us gathered here today, just as it is of veterans who
have given their lives in service to their country?
Years ago, while
I visited the battlefield cemeteries of Flanders, one of my most heartrending
experiences was to see the grave markers, some with this inscription repeated
multiple times for the still-unidentified soldiers buried one on top of
another: “A soldier of the Great War, known only unto God.”
This day is for
us to remember our veterans: Those known by name; those “known only unto God”;
those who “loved and [are] loved”; those still living; those who have gone
before us in death; and those who lie in Flanders’ fields and in other places
around the world that have known armed conflict.
Veterans’ Day is
not to glorify war, but it is a day for us, a people of God who love and are
loved, to re-commit ourselves to justice and to peace in the memory of those
who have kept us in peace and freedom. And so John McCrae continues:
Take up your
quarrel with the foe.
To you from
failing hands we throw
The torch! Be
yours to hold it high.
Who is our foe,
and what is the torch we are asked to hold high? Our foe includes any affront
to human life from conception to natural death; any affront to the dignity of
God’s creation. Non-violently but nevertheless actively and prayerfully, we are
invited to “take up our quarrel” with social structures and attitudes that
dehumanize the poor, the disabled, the elderly; structures and attitudes that lead
to war and violence; structures and attitudes that fail to protect the created
environment; structures and attitudes contrary to God’s justice and wisdom
about which we hear in today’s first reading; any social and individual reluctance
to forgive as radically as Jesus asks us to forgive in today’s Gospel.
The alternative
to justice; to upholding human dignity and the dignity of creation; to
non-violence; to forgiveness; to loving as we are loved by God, is stark, as
our Scriptures continually remind us, and our veterans who have fought bloody
battles for these values remind us, as St. Martin of Tours, whose feast we
celebrate today, reminds us, and as John McCrae reminds us in the closing
sentence of his poem:
If ye break
faith with us who die,
We shall not
sleep though poppies grow
In Flanders’
fields.
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