To you from failing hands we throw/The torch; be yours to hold it high

Consider this my little rebellion.

Well, not really. Had I been home on Sunday morning, I'd have gone to the Remembrance Day Requiem mass at the Oratory, which is one of my favourite masses of the year - the recessional hymn always leaves me choked up.

I hate Remembrance Sunday - NOT in the way you expect. I hate it in the way I hate transferring holy days of obligation to a Sunday to make it more convenient. If a day is THAT important, you don't transfer it. Moving it to a weekend says, "You're not important enough for me to interrupt my work week for you." Holy days of obligation are THAT important. You stop during your week to remember God and go to church.

Equally important is the day that we remember those that we have sent to war to fight and die for us. The day we do that is NOT the closest Sunday to the day. It is THE DAY.

The 11th day of the 11th month at the 11th hour. The moment when the war that was supposed to end all wars ended. THAT is the day, whatever day of the week it is. And it is a day when the world should stop, when we should:

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

Nor, on this day, must we forget the parents, spouses, children, lovers and friends of the fallen, those whose loss echoes these words:

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

We need to be there for them - remembrance is for the living as well as the dead.

It is on the 11th that we should keep silent for 2 minutes out of respect.

It is on the 11th that the words Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine should sound from every church at 11.02 am (Verdi, not Faure), the Mourners' Kaddish from every synagogue, prayers for the dead from every place of religion, whether it is a Sunday, Wednesday or a Friday.

It is on the 11th that we should lay wreaths at cenotaphs and war memorials and weep for the universes we lost with each of the fallen, for every single human being is a universe.

It is on the 11th that we close our eyes to offer our profound gratitude for the men and women who either chose to become career soldiers or who chose to put down the lives they were living to become soldiers when their country called them - and those who love them. The sacrifice they made for us cannot be put into words. No matter how we feel about the wars they fought, we thank them and pray for them, because they fought for us, even if those declaring war didn't declare war for us.

And it is on the 11th that we renew our promise to John McCrae and his fallen colleagues, past and present:

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.

With greater certainty and hope than in years past, I can say that I believe we have caught it.

May we never again break faith with you who have died...and those of you who have come back.

Thank you.

Bring them home

Enough is enough. Isn't it time that the Royal Festival of Remembrance became just that - a festival of *remembrance*? Last year, I spoke of how haunted I was by cataloguing books from 1910-1920, and how lads entering university in 1912 or 1913 rightly looking forward to golden years studying and punting found themselves on the muddy fields of Ypres.

In this year's Royal Festival of Remembrance, John Simms read us a letter from Passchendaele written by Jack Mudd to his wife Lizzy and their two little ones, taking us back across the years, reminding us of the true cost of war:

Dear Lizzie, it's nearly six months since I saw you, how I long for you and the children. God bless you all. I love you more than ever. I want nothing more to take you in my arms, what a lot of love we have missed, but please God it will make it all the sweeter when I see you.

...

Please God it won't be long before this war is over, we are pushing old Fritz back, I don't think he will stand the British boys much longer, and then we will try and keep a nice home. I will know the value of that now.

Why can we not know it always? Four days later, Jack was not present at roll call, and his body was never recovered from the knee deep mud and slime at Ypres. Lizzie remarried a friend of his from the same battalion who was badly wounded, but she kept his last letter in remembrance of their happiness. Her daughter donated it to the Imperial War Museum, granting us the privilege of a window onto their love.

No more. No more stories of young men dying on their 24th birthday in Basra's field hospital whilst his twin holds his hand. No more men and women coming home irreparably wounded - physically, spiritually and emotionally. No more young widows and widowers. No more orphans.

No more young men dying for old men's wars.

From Laurence Binyon:

For The Fallen
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

And finally, please...

God on high
Hear my prayer
In my need
You have always been there.

He is young,
He's afraid -
Let him rest,
Heaven blessed.
Bring him home
Bring him home
Bring him home.

Just bring them home. For always.