Reepham Benefice
Rediscovering the past: through a mixture of luck, slow and paint staking research and lots of patience, we are beginning to piece together some of the names recorded on the WWI Memorial in St. Michael’s Chancel more>
Amongst those war time duties which we are beginning to learn (such duties as self-sacrifice and intercession and sympathy) there is one which is easily overlooked and not easily acquired – the duty of thankfulness.
We are told that our “atmosphere” at home mysteriously affects our soldiers and sailors at the front, and that if we are depressed or timid or querulous, their spirits suffer too. So we shall be serving our country in some measure if, in the midst of war’s sorrows and calamities, and in the anxieties of dark times, we keep that spirit of thankfulness which comes only from being absolutely sure that God overrules all, and that, in His good time, victory must rest with righteousness and justice. This kind of faith will make us optimists – not the kind of optimists who refuse to see the seriousness of the war, or to believe in any bad news, but optimists because we believe that, whatever happens, God will work all things for good to them that love Him.
If this thankful trust in God is a duty (and who can doubt it?), then it is also our duty to try to see – in order to counterbalance the dark side of the war – some of the blessings which will accrue to us, and are already accruing, through the war. We must think of, and thank God for, the self sacrifice, courage and patience of our soldiers and sailors, for our own safety at home at present, for the loyalty of our allies, for the increase of religion amongst our fighting men, and for God’s protection of so many of our friends in danger.
It may seem a little heartless – when our fellow countrymen are fighting and suffering and dying for us in France and Belgium and elsewhere – calmly in our peace at home to reckon up some of the blessings which we may hop for through their self-sacrifice. But if we do this in order that we may be more thankful to them, and sympathise with them and pray for them better, it will be a right and helpful thing for us to do who cannot fight.
In many ways we may hope that true religion – which is the love of God and His Son – will be helped by the war. It is quite possible, for instance, that the war may help to draw different branches of Christ’s Church into a closer understanding with one another. Or again, we may surely hope that many who in the past have been brought nearer to God by the stress and anxiety and sorrow, and that mot regular Churchgoers at least, will have learnt to pray more earnestly and humbly. In the same way, we not hope that many who have learnt during the war to plead at the Lord’s Table for their absent friends will have learnt a new joy in the habit of meeting their Savour there?
In this little paper I want to point out what may seem quite a minor blessing which may come out of the war for us Church people. I mean this – that war and its lessons may make the example of the Saints a much more real thing to us, and a far greater help to us, than it has been in the past.
We say continually that we believe in “the Communion of Saints” – that is, that we have a real fellowship with the baptised of all ages who have passed to their rest before us; and we pray year by year that we may “follow the blessed Saints and all virtuous and godly living”. Yet to how many Churchmen does the Communion of Saints, or their example, mean anything at all?
Is it not true to say that to the ordinary Englishman a Saint is a very far-distant and uninteresting person, very vague and mil-and-watery, and almost always lacking in just those qualities which the Englishman admires – manliness and courage and energy? And this idea is encouraged by many church windows, which give very effeminate representations of the Saints.
How wrong this conception is we can see at one when we recall that Saints have been, in every age (it is that which has made them Saints) the closest friends of Jesus, and have become (more than ordinary Christians) like Him in character. And this means, of course, that they have followed Him not only in humility (a virtue which Englishmen cannot always appreciate), but also in such qualities as courage and self restraint and self sacrifice.
By a wrong conception of the character of the Saints, we have lost much of the inspiration and encouragement which their example is meant to give us. The war will bring is no small blessing if it gives us back this heritage which we have allowed to slip away from us.
And the war can do this very thing – in this way. It is bringing home to all of us what it means to deny oneself or to suffer or die on behalf of a principle, on behalf or a righteous cause. Day by day thousands have gladly endured hardship and danger and weariness for the sake of their King. Thousands have willingly given up the comforts and safety of home, and faced wounds and sickness and death itself for the sake of their country. Thousands on the battlefield have risked life, and laid it down, to save a friend or for their regiment’s honour.
Should not all this help to open the floodgates of wider sympathy and understanding with the Saints and martyrs of old? What is the whole story of the Saints but just that of suffering and dying, if need be, for a principle, for honour? Will not a new light, through the war, be thrown for many English people upon the self-sacrifice of such Saints as St. John the Baptist or St. Jerome or the Venerable Bede, who gave up home and dainty food and soft clothes to endure hardship in order that they might advance the cause of the King of kings by their teaching or prayers or studies? Is not a new light thrown upon (and a new sympathy created with) the examples of those Christians, many of them very lowly in station, who, for the sake of loyalty to a principle, for the sake of loyalty to their King, faced an awful death at the teeth of wild beasts in the Roman amphitheatre, rather than burn incense to a statue?
We have – if we will only realise it – a great heritage of heroism and patience and loyalty here. Just awe have an undying source of inspiration in the heroic deeds of the great men of our own nation, so have we in the Church of Christ; only here the inspiration is not limited to the deeds of any one nation. St Athanasius, standing “alone against the world” for the truth of Christ’s divinity, five times driven from his diocese; St Alban (first recorded British martyr) laying down his life to shelter the aged priest who had taught him the Faith; St Boniface, and many other undaunted missionary martyrs; St Francis of Assisi, cultured and rich, living a life of poverty and hardship to preach the Gospel. These are but a few – a very few – amongst that mighty “cloud of witness” who are our elder brethren in God’s family, and acquitted themselves so manfully for their Master and the generations to come. Their story comes home to us with an altogether new force and beauty now that we are learning anew the force and beauty of all self-sacrifice and self-devotion. Indeed, if the Saints had not handed down through the ages the spirit of self-surrender for Christ and Christ’s flock, we may be sure that there would exist amongst us such a spirit of noble self-sacrifice as has been found in our midst, found in our men fighting for us in those foreign fields of France and Belgium.
Will not clergy during and after the war, as All Saints’ Day recurs in the regular round of the Church’s year, be able to point with an altogether greater reality, earnestness and thankfulness to the encouragement and help afforded us by the example of the Saints, and to the privilege which we possess in membership in the Communion of Saints?
Only let us ever remember that the distinguished feature of their lives was that they were the friends of Jesus, and that it was for His sake that they were willing to give up all that they had. Let their example, and the urgency of the war, bring us ever near to Him, and teach us to throw ourselves more and more wholly upon His Power, His Love, His Justice.
A poem published in the January edition of the parish magazine in 1915, recalling the loss of life on the frontlines, is a stirring reminder of what was sacrificed more>
The Communion of Saints in War Time
Preached by The Reverend G. L. May