A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus looked up to heaven and prayed. Oh father, father, most holy, protect them with your name which you have given me, that they may be one even as we are one. As long as I was with them, I guarded them with your name which you gave me. I kept careful watch, and not one of them was lost.
None but him who was destined to be lost. It's very mysterious. In fulfillment of the scripture. Now, however, I come to you. I say all of this while I am still in the world that they may share my joy completely.
I gave them your word, and the world has hated them for it. They do not belong to the world anymore than I belong to the world. I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to guard them from the evil one. They are not of the world anymore than I am the world. Consecrate them by means of truth.
Your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. I consecrate myself for their sakes now that they may be consecrated in truth. And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. It's very easy to overlook, to forget, to bury, literally to bury the most obvious. Now, maybe some of you saw this documentary of that was made by Eisenhower and Walter Conkry twenty years ago, on the twentieth anniversary of the landing in Normandy, of the allied troops. We weren't the only ones there.
When I say eight or 9,000 men killed, their crosses are over there. They were The USA soldiers and the men, not the entire number. Now, some of the clips that they showed last night, most of the main actors are dead. They're all dead, the main characters in it. What was extremely moving to me was some of the shots taken of men who had been in that invasion and had who had returned for the celebration which is being held today.
Our president will be there. Most of them simply cried. It's all they could do. They didn't want to talk about it. Because when you stand up and because their mind, their memories can, I am sure, revive what happened forty years ago?
And they can contrast that with the scene that they see over there today. Remember, Normandy is used to being invaded. They have been invaded years century after century after century. And they build and have been destroyed, and they rebuild and they destroy. Now, some of the pictures I saw last night, you'd scarcely know anything had happened there.
But these men remembered. They remembered the horror of that scene. Remember, our men that most of those men had been on the ships for four days in idleness, waiting to go over. Four days cramped up in a ship, every man with his own supplies, his own equipment. Then when they landed, or tried to land, it was terrific.
Seasick is one of the worst things that hit them. No one anybody knows how many drowned, they were just missing. Boats overturned as Eisenhower said the first day was a disaster. That's what he himself said. The first day was a disaster.
Nothing went right. And you can't as I watched that last night, I couldn't help recalling Tolstoy's War and Peace, which people don't read anymore. Of course, it's a big book, so you don't read a big book. It's too long, you know. You value a book by its length, I guess.
But anyway, the whole thing is brought to you that war is is a catastrophe and that the best the best laid plans don't work out. Now another thought that struck me is that you hear a great deal of ridicule, ridicule, sarcasm cast at the so called thinkers and philosophers of the middle ages and what they call the influence of heavenly bodies. That is how the stars and the moon and the heavenly bodies influence life. They made a great deal of that. Albert, the great Thomas Aquinas, all of them.
And they ridicule that. They say, we know better than that. We know that the heavens don't control things on this earth. Don't they? Don't they?
Because if there's one thing came out perfectly clear from general Eisenhower himself was this, the man who called the shots for the invasion of Normandy was a meteorologist. He is the one who said, we will have this kind of a moon, we will have this kind of a tide, and we will have this kind of a wind. And on the basis of his decision, they did not go one day when they were planned to go, when everything seemed so good. And he said, yes, you can go today, the following day, when things seem terrible. Who called the shots?
It was a meteorologist. Who was controlling him? The sun, the moon, the tides, the winds. General Eisenhower isn't the man who said, now let's go in today. They all this is Eisenhower's own words.
It's a matter of record, and they gave the man's name. So we do hang from a thread. We do hang from a thread. And the thread we hang from is God's providence. You see, the trouble with people is they think of peace in terms of the absence of war.
As Eisenhower said, we mustn't let this happen again. Well, that's not the worst thing that can happen by far. You see, we've lost the concept of what is really evil and what isn't. As Newman said listen, what Newman said. You never hear him he is quoted.
That it were better for the whole world to be lost than one venial sin to be committed. One venial sin to be committed. That's what Newman said. Now we have even Catholic theologians saying, is it at times right to say that the end justifies the means? We have Catholic theologians saying that today.
A final thought. Walter Cronkite ended his this was the twenty it was twenty years ago. He ended his documentary that is touring the area with with Eisenhower, with saying these men did not give their lives, it was taken they were taken from them. That's probably true, but I hate to think it was true of all of them. I hate to think it was true of all of them.
That they were just a bunch of puppets, that they had no conception of what they were doing, that they had no convictions and persuasion that what they were doing was on a heroic plane. That they had some vision of a pagan poet who said how sweet it is, Dulce et decorum es pro patria mora at Cicero. How sweet I how do you translate dulce? I don't know. Dulce et decorum, it is proper and becoming and desirable to lay down your life for your country.
Within the last forty eight hours, I was talking to a young man who said, look, and I wasn't this came out of the blue. He said it the first suggestion that we're at war, I'm hiking to Canada. They won't find me. I like to think that out of nine, eight or 9,000 men, that some of them realized their lives were not being taken. They were laying them down for a cause that in their view was just, and we hope so that it was just before god.
In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.