Remember Them Well · 11:04pm Nov 11th, 2019
Humans are imperfect beings. Yet, we strive to improve, both ourselves and those around us. We try to make the world better. We sacrifice for each other. In a word, we love each other.
The most heroic act of love we can conceive is to lay down one’s life for another, whether that be in the sense of dying to self in living sacrifice for another, or in giving one’s life to protect another.
What, then, are soldiers? Soldiers are those who lay down their lives in love for a country – for a great many people as one. They are the ones who say, “See? I raise my hand and swear to give my life to you. Where you send me, I shall go. What you ask of me, I shall do. If enemies threaten your life, I will kill. If your enemies strike at you, I will die shielding you.”
They do this knowing that the country they love is imperfect, just as people are imperfect. They do so in love, giving their lives in the hope of preserving what good there is and ensuring a greater good for tomorrow.
Sometimes, soldiers give their lives up for countries who, at least most of the time, strive to live up to the values for which the soldiers fight.
Sometimes, soldiers give their lives up for countries who do not deserve their noble sacrifice.
Either way, the nobility and honor of the true soldier is to be admired for the selfless act of love and bravery that it is. And, perhaps just as importantly, it ought to galvanize us to make our countries worthy of their sacrifices.
The freedoms we enjoy are secured and defended with the blood and tears of countless men and women over the millennia who have fought with the hope of a better world, who killed and died trusting that their sacrifice would be spent in making the future just a little brighter.
We will never have a perfect world, and so we can never wholly repay the debt we owe. Yet that should not stop us from trying. In everyday acts of goodness as we strive to make our countries, communities, and families better, we honor those who, though flawed themselves and serving flawed systems, still ensured the freedom to seek goodness we now enjoy.
In the United States, November 11th is called Veterans Day. In other countries, it is known as Remembrance Day. I charge you this day to remember our veterans, in particular those whose service continues long after their wars have ended in the form of the wounds they carry, and those who never came home at all. I charge you to honor their memory by making the most of the life you’ve been given.
For those who have given their lives, we must live well.
To those who have served, you have our profound gratitude.
Veterans Day, Remembrance Day 2019
For the Fallen:
A priest, himself an Army combat veteran, once told me that Taps, played at the end of the day in most military installations in the US and at military funerals, is a bittersweet sound. It is a charge to the living to live well, a reminder to honor the dead, and a promise that soldiers will all, one day, be called home.
Eternal rest grant unto them, oh Lord, and let Perpetual Light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.
Amen.
Agreed. To their service, we honor them.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLp2LmaTEmg
Amen. In imitation of Christ who went out to meet death willingly for others.
Pro Deo et Patria
Honor them lads, and bring them home. They'll always come home, one way or another.
Lest We Forget
They are more then soldiers. They are our guardian angels, our noble knights.
The less we remember their sacrifices, the less we appreciate what they sacrificed themselves for.
Never, never forget about our soldiers.
Amen.
"For your tomorrow,
We gave our today." - British monument to Imphal and Kohima.
Happy (belated) Armistice Day!