THE MOUNTING DEBT

 A SERMON FOR THE 8TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Credit cards can be a good thing or a bad thing.  They allow us to get through those occasional bad times in life when we’re not making ends meet, and of course they give us the opportunity to buy things we can’t afford to pay for all at once.  Whenever we use a credit card though, we put ourselves in danger.  The ridiculous amount of interest the banks charge actually amount to usury, a sin which is condemned by the Church.  But the banks don’t particularly care that the Catholic Church frowns upon their practice and as a result it is we borrowers who run the risk of falling afoul of their greed.  These banks are so disinterested in our wellbeing that when people can’t afford to come up with their minimum monthly payment, they’re slapped with late fees and other penalties that drag them even further into debt.

We should remember, even as we disparage this unfortunate side of capitalism, that there is some small element of justice in the way the banks operate.  After all, when we borrow their money, they’re losing the interest and benefits they would otherwise be making from that money.  They also incur expenses in running their lending business, with many overheads for property, employees, insurance and so on, not to mention the risk they run that we won’t be able to pay them back.  So they are entitled to some compensation in the way of interest, though not, of course, in order to amass the exorbitant profits they make at our expense.

In itself, it is not sinful to lend out money or other goods.  Morally speaking, it might be more charitable if the lending were done without any interest attached, but in justice you are entitled to the repayment of expenses incurred by reason of the loan.  Nor is it sinful to take out a loan, to borrow money, providing we have the sincere intention of paying it back.  That applies whether we’ve borrowed money from a bank or from our grandmother.  We owe it, and we must, in justice, pay it back.  The excessive interest charged by the bank may give us some leeway in how much we are morally obliged to pay back , but at the very least we owe them the original amount we borrowed, plus some interest to cover their costs of doing business.  As for grandmas, they usually don’t charge any interest at all and probably won’t hound you with lawsuits if you can’t afford to pay them back.  But somehow, this just seems to increase the moral obligation of giving Grandma back her money, doesn’t it?

It’s not a nice position to be in, owing people money, or anything else for that matter.  It’s a weight that hangs over our head until the debt is repaid.  We know we have to pay what we owe, but that isn’t always easy.  Nevertheless, the relief we feel when a debt is paid back can make it worth the while.

But what about God?  Do you think, maybe, we owe God anything?  Has God given us anything that he expects to be returned?  If I gave you time to write a list, I’ve a feeling it would take you a very long time to complete it.  It’s a list that goes on and on.  But maybe there are some of you who would object, and tell me that, no, God doesn’t lend us things, he gives us things.  Really?  Are the nice things we have just “free gifts” from God, who expects us to do with them what we want?  Does he nod in approval when we abuse these gifts?  If you give your child a birthday gift, a box of crayons for example, and he then uses those crayons to write graffiti all over your living room wall, would you be happy with that?  No.  You would expect that the child use that gift in the way you intended him to, with the freedom certainly, to choose whatever crayon he wants to color whichever picture in his coloring book he wants, but not to write his name on his baby sister’s face.

All good things come from above.  They are given to us by God to use freely.  Freely in the sense that we may use them wisely and according to the will of God.  But we must repay those gifts by doing just that.  We must never abuse any of these gifts from God, and don’t forget your list—these gifts comprise everything that is good in our lives.  Let each one of us think upon what he has, and evaluate the wisdom with which he uses it, from money to parents, from our home to our jobs to our health, from our mind to our body.  Let us shrink away in horror from the very idea of ever abusing any gift from God.

Unfortunately, temptation rears its ugly head from time to time.  If ever there’s anything that makes us indebted to God, it’s our offenses against him and the abuse of his generosity.  We were born owing God.  From the moment of our conception, even, the stain of original sin of our first parents required us to be washed from that sin in the waters of baptism.  To be baptized into the Catholic Church is the very first debt that a human being repays to God.  There then follows the beautiful part of our life when we owe God nothing.  If we die during these blessed years when we know not sin, we will go directly to heaven because there is nothing to repay.  Not only are we incapable of sinning in these early years, but we are also incapable of abusing God’s gifts—sure, we take everything we’re given, by our doting parents, and let’s not forget Grandma again!  But we don’t abuse what we’re given.  At least, not intentionally.  A child may have his moments, the odd temper tantrum for instance when he throws his dirty spoon on the carpet, but he isn’t necessarily doing so in an immoral way, it’s just human nature developing slowly into rational behavior.  Some of us are still developing, we haven’t quite made it there yet.  But little children live in a special and blessed paradise of their own, always just one step away from entering the actual paradise of heaven.

Imagine though the adult who continually falls into sin.  Sometimes, he falls after fighting temptation, other times, he doesn’t even bother to fight temptation, but simply accepts every wicked thought that comes into his head, seeking pleasure and self-gratification above all else.  No matter what kind of person we are, we all eventually fall into sin.  We plunge ourselves into debt!  So let’s make another list, one we’ll keep to ourselves of course—how much do you think you owe God today?  Think back at all the sins of your life, the bad behavior, the wasted opportunities to do good.  Tell me then that you owe God nothing.

With this in mind, we turn to the problem of paying him back.  How is it even possible?  Strictly speaking, the answer is that it isn’t.  Which is why God gave us us the greatest gift of all, the gift of Redemption.  He has redeemed us by the Precious Blood of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.  There is nothing we can do to pay this gift back , but like a good Grandma, God isn’t going to insist that we do anything more than we’re capable of.  And what are we capable of doing?  Well, like Grandma, God loves us.  This love is the free gift par excellence, the gift that sums up and is the source of all the other gifts we listed earlier, including Redemption.  And all that God asks in return for his love is our love.  If we love God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength, we are giving back to God all that we can.  We are repaying him in the best way we know how.  So let’s obey the laws he gives us, let’s use all his other gifts wisely, and let’s commit ourselves to loving God as perfectly as we can.  That’s all the payment he wants.

FORGIVE OUR SINS AS WE FORGIVE

 A HYMN FOR THE 8TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

by Rosamond E. Herklots, 1966

 

1. 'Forgive our sins as we forgive,'

you taught us, Lord, to pray,

but you alone can grant us grace

to live the words we say.

 

2. How can your pardon reach and bless

the unforgiving heart,

that broods on wrongs and will not let

old bitterness depart?

 

3. In blazing light your cross reveals

the truth we dimly knew:

what trivial debts are owed to us,

how great our debt to you!

 

4. Lord, cleanse the depths within our souls,

and bid resentment cease;

then, bound to all in bonds of love,

our lives will spread your peace.

HEIRS OF GOD

A REFLECTION FOR THE 8TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Things get passed down from father to son.  It is the way of the world, as one generation passes away and leaves its prized possessions to the next.  Children inherit the homes, the bank accounts, the automobiles and other material goods once so meticulously cared for and treasured by their parents, and then these children grow up, get married, and, when the time comes, pass on the family heirlooms to their own children.  Memories are preserved, the family legacy continues.

 

Unfortunately, it sometimes happens that a child, instead of dutifully following in his father’s footsteps, will dis-inherit himself by defying his father’s laws, by walking away from his father’s home in order to lead a lifestyle disapproved of by his parents.  There are even laws today which facilitate the younger generation from renouncing the authority of their own family.  It’s called “emancipation”, and is a legal way for children to become adults before they are 18. Once a child is emancipated, his parents do not have custody or control of him anymore.  However, nor do they any longer have the responsibility of taking care of that child, or of passing on their wealth to him when they die.  To be emancipated is automatically to be disinherited.

 

Of course, people, especially young ones, often make mistakes.  Take the Prodigal Son for example, who leaves home to seek a life of pleasure and debauchery.  As we know, that didn’t work out too well for him, so he decides to go back to his father who welcomes him with open arms.  For the arms of a father are always, must be always, ready to embrace a prodigal son who repents.  It’s what a father does.

 

Our Lord often refers to us as the Children of God.  Indeed, when he taught us to pray, it was to “Our Father, who art in heaven” that he instructed us to address our prayers.  We are indebted to this Father in heaven, because he gave us his only-begotten Son who redeemed us by his Precious Blood.  Plus, he has given us so much else besides, indeed everything we have.  Unfortunately, we often repay his generosity by sinning against him, even to the point of deliberately defying his most serious laws in acts that are mortally sinful.  Such acts deprive us of our inheritance.

 

As Children of God, we are the heirs of God.  If we are given the grace to repent of our sins before we die, we will be welcomed by our Father in heaven with the open arms he has always held wide, ready to embrace us.  We will be joint-heirs with Christ, the true Son of God himself.  As St. Paul so beautifully describes it in today’s Epistle, if we suffer with Christ by mortifying the deeds of the body, we will also be glorified together with him.

KNOWING THEM BY THEIR FRUITS

 A SERMON FOR THE 7TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Our blessed Lord warns us today to beware of false prophets.  The word prophet is often confused with someone who foretells the future, and indeed, this is sometimes the role of the prophet.  But a prophet’s main responsibility is to make known the will of God to the people.  For this task, he has been set aside by God and given the direct graces to know God’s will and to convey it to the world.  This gives us a clue to recognizing a true prophet when we come across one.  A true prophet could never possibly contradict something that God has already revealed in the past and that has been taught consistently and dogmatically by the Church, because Truth is an objective reality that can’t change over time.

Many, many saints and theologians, clergy and laity, have been prophets in that they have been inspired with new insights into the eternal truths of God.  Unfortunately, others have come to us claiming to teach us totally “new” truths about who God is and what he wants for us, “truths” which weren’t true at all, but which contradicted the truths contained in divine revelation.  Some of them were outwardly very pious, and with great depth of passion and emotion preached their new doctrines.  People like Martin Luther and others were notoriously good at drawing people away from the Faith with their charismatic presence and rousing speeches.  At the age of 22, Luther had joined the Augustinian order as a monk and was later ordained a priest.  He dedicated himself to the monastic life, devoting himself to fasting, long hours in prayer, pilgrimage, and frequent confession.  He knew very well how to wear the habit of sheep’s clothing.  Eventually, of course, he left the priesthood, married a nun, and publicly denied many of the Church’s teachings, reducing the sacraments from seven to only two, denying the existence of priesthood, and claiming that salvation was not earned by good works but was rather a free gift from God given to all those who “believed” in presumably what only he, Luther, taught.  This ravening wolf in his sheep’s clothing went on to advocate for the killing of Jews and the burning down of synagogues, giving rise to an anti-Semitic fervor in Germany that continued until the 20^th century with tragic consequences.  Luther was not the last charismatic German who knew how to sway the crowds with rousing speeches.

On October 13, 2016, ironically the anniversary of the miracle of the sun at Fatima, another man, this time dressed in the habit of a pope, enthroned a statue of Martin Luther in the Vatican.  Referring to Luther, Bergoglio proclaimed that “The Church's greatest reformers are the saints, in other words the men and women who follow the Word of the Lord and practice it. This is the path we need to take,” he said, pointing to the statue of one of the most evil heretics in history, “this is what reforms the church and they are great reformers.”  One ravening wolf praising another.  We are now hearing that Bergoglio is drastically curtailing the use of the traditional Mass which his predecessor Ratzinger made readily available to all priests.  His hatred for the Mass rivals that of Luther himself, but then, if he models himself after Luther, if “this is the path we need to take”, why should we be surprised?

Many modern-day Catholics, even traditional Catholics, fail completely to recognize that in Bergoglio we have a false prophet, a ravening wolf in sheep’s clothing.  “Oh, but Father, we’re not supposed to judge!” they say, reprovingly.  I was looking at some YouTube video about Bergoglio’s proposed abolition of the true Mass, and I read in the comments below, the rather pathetic declaration from one Catholic, that: “It saddens me to be hated, actually hated by the Holy Father, because I love the Mass of the Ages.”  What saddens me is that a traditional Catholic who loves the Mass so much is so upset that he is hated by a ravening wolf who is doing his level best to wipe it from the face of the earth!  What saddens me is that in spite of Bergoglio’s manifestly anti-Catholic agenda, a traditional Catholic can still revere this wolf as the “Holy Father” and be so upset to be on his bad side.

“We’re not supposed to judge?”  That’s not what our Lord says.  He says that we must judge people by their actions, and the fruit of their actions.  “Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.”  Every good Pope bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt Pope bringeth forth evil fruit.  You judge whether you think the abolition of the Mass that Christ gave us, and the substitution in its place of  the self-worship of man known as the Novus Ordo, is a good fruit of Bergoglio or an evil fruit.  If it’s an evil fruit, then we can certainly judge Bergoglio as a corrupt “pope” that is to be “hewn down”, as our Lord says, “and cast into the fire.”  We can leave the punishment part up to our Lord, as that’s his job—"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”  But for now, it’s enough to just recognize by their evil fruits these popes and bishops since Vatican II, and do what’s necessary to protect our faith and that of our families.

If I needed to say more on this subject, I would.  But in this congregation gathered here today, I can’t imagine there’s anyone who has failed to recognize the evil fruit of Vatican II.  If you didn’t, you wouldn’t even be here.  What I’d rather stress to you this morning, is that, while it’s very easy to point the finger at those who are so obviously evil, there’s a very real danger that any of us, at any time, may also fall into the trap of becoming a ravening wolf inside of our own traditional Catholic sheep’s clothing.  How would we do that?  By bringing forth evil fruit.  We must try to ensure that our fruit is good, and that we leave this world a better place for having been in it.

The American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson explained this in natural terms we can all understand: “To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived — that is to have succeeded.”  A healthy child?  I would say, a saintly child would show even greater success.  Or if not quite saintly, then at least a good Catholic child, firm in his or her faith, and a true warrior of Christ.  Maybe some of your children have fallen away from the faith?  They are your fruit, and you must do your best to keep them hanging on your branches.  But if they have fallen off, then it’s still up to you to tend that garden patch Emerson talks about.  Do your best to pick up any fruit you find that’s fallen from the tree into the garden patch, find it and care for it before it rots away and is cast into the fire.  And don’t be led astray by Emerson’s mention of a “redeemed social condition.”  That’s a notion that has been vastly perverted in many cases by liberals into social-ism.  But there are indeed many social conditions that require reform.  Like our ancestors worked for the abolition of slavery, we today have the task of working for the abolition of abortion.  We must work to redeem the sacrament of marriage, which has been under such an onslaught in every way imaginable.  How do we work for such ends?  According to our means, our circumstances and our opportunities.  But we must all start by working on our own family, our own children, making sure every member of our precious inner circle knows God, loves God, and serves God.  We should extend our efforts as our circumstances permit, but at least let’s leave our family a better family than it was before.  As St. Paul in his Epistle today, we must “have our fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.”

As a final thought, let’s remind ourselves that it is in fact on this that we shall be judged.  For just as we may judge others by their fruit, so too will Christ our Lord one day judge us.  “By their fruits ye shall know them.”  Don’t forget—“By our fruits, He will know us.”

CHRIST IS MADE THE SURE FOUNDATION

 A HYMN FOR THE 7TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Translated from the Latin Hymn Fundamentum Angularis

by J.M. Neale, 1861

 

1 Christ is made the sure foundation,

Christ the head and cornerstone,

Chosen of the Lord and precious,

Binding all the church in one;

Holy Zion's help forever,

And her confidence alone.

 

2 All that dedicated city,

Dearly loved of God on high,

In exultant jubilation

Pours perpetual melody;

God the One in Three adoring

In glad hymns eternally.

 

3 To this temple, where we call thee,

Come, O Lord of hosts, today:

With thy wonted loving-kindness

Hear thy people as they pray;

And thy fullest benediction

Shed within its walls alway.

 

4 Here vouchsafe to all thy servants

What they ask of thee to gain,

What they gain from thee forever

With the blessed to retain,

And hereafter in thy glory

Evermore with thee to reign.

 

5 Laud and honor to the Father,

Laud and honor to the Son,

Laud and honor to the Spirit,

Ever Three and ever One,

One in might, and One in glory,

While unending ages run.  Amen.

FRUIT UNTO HOLINESS

A REFLECTION FOR THE 7TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Sorrow for our sins is something that is drummed into every Catholic boy and girl from the moment they’re capable of rational thought.  We learn that it’s just not enough to recognize when we’ve done something bad.  We actually have to be sorry that we did it.  It’s one of the requirements for a valid confession, for without sorrow for our sins we are refusing to acknowledge that we really did something wrong.  If it was wrong, then I should not have done it.  Therefore, I should regret having done it.  I should be sorry I did it.

Sometimes, we have a twinge of guilt because we don’t “feel” sorry.  But let’s appreciate the fact, please, that sorrow is so much more than mere “feeling”.  Sorrow for sin is an act of the will, by which we confess our regret for having offended the God we know to be infinitely good and deserving of all our love.  For confession to be valid, we must at least regret having done wrong because we fear the consequences of our sin.  Tears, emotions, sentimental inspirations—all these are sublime gifts from God if we’re blessed enough to experience them, but they are in reality only the confirmation of our actual repentance, and a help in resolving to do better in future.

To help instill in us the true sense of enormity our sins entail, St. Paul reminds us in today’s Epistle what those sins accomplished for us.  He asks the rhetorical question, “What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?”  Those terrible things we did that now, when we look back, fill us with such shame and horror that we were capable of acting like that… They tempted us with some perceived good at the time, obviously.  We wanted something, and we disobeyed God’s law in order to get it.  And now, looking back, what did we really achieve by our sin?  Are we better off today because we did this or that?  Better yet, let’s place ourselves on our deathbed and imagine we’re about to meet our Maker, our Judge.  What then will we think of these terrible acts we committed?  What “good fruit” have we to show for them?  “For the end of these things,” says St. Paul, “is death.”  True death, eternal death, death from which we shall never rise again to be happy with God in heaven.  “For the wages of sin is death.”

All God asks is that we be sorry for our sins, that we confess them with true repentance, and that we resolve not to commit them again.  This is the gift of God to us, his children, that we have our “fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.”  Indeed, “the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  Let’s be sorry then, that we keep messing up so badly.

SOME SELF-EVIDENT TRUTHS

 A SERMON FOR INDEPENDENCE DAY

It was on this day, 245 years ago, in the year 1776, that the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, officially adopted the Declaration of Independence.  This manuscript, written by Thomas Jefferson, was indeed a declaration.  So what did it declare?  It declared the official birth of this nation, and has ever since been held as the single most influential document in America’s history.  Perhaps its most famous and important sentence is the following: that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Like all written texts, these words are capable of many interpretations—and you know, of course, that as soon as there is a possibility of interpreting words in different ways, someone somewhere is eventually going to get it wrong.  This is why we have a Supreme Court, to ensure that the Constitution based on the Declaration is applied fairly and justly to the laws of the land.  In a certain respect it’s actually a good thing that the Declaration can be interpreted in different ways, because one of those ways is the Catholic way.  For we Catholics do indeed believe that all men are created equal in the eyes of God, whether they be kings or paupers, white men or black men, or even women!  We were all born with a soul, a soul with free will, that allows all of us the same potential for eternal salvation or damnation.  It’s the actions of each person, their thoughts, words and deeds, that will determine how God will judge us, certainly not by our gender, our nationality, or the color of our skin.

The question of whether we have unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, is somewhat more vexed.  The founding fathers were mostly slave owners, and this gave rise, and still does, to the conflict between what the Declaration says and the reality of slavery which was allowed to continue.  If I may be permitted to quote an Englishman on this “hallowed day”, the abolitionist Thomas Day wrote, in 1776, that “If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.”  Thomas Jefferson, for example, wrote a whole paragraph in his original draft of the Declaration, condemning the slave trade as an assemblage of horrors.  Meanwhile, he owned six hundred slaves on his Monticello plantation.  Another signer of the Declaration on the other hand, William Whipple, freed his slave, believing that he could not both fight for liberty and own slaves at the same time.

Since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, slavery continued for many years, especially in the southern part of the United States.  Heavily Democratic, the South remained a bastion of racism even after abolition, with the segregation of blacks institutionalized by strict state laws that continued into my own lifetime.  Groups like the Ku Klux Klan helped enforce these laws in ways that can be described only as barbarous, lynching with impunity any negroes they spotted “stepping out of line.”  

Interestingly enough, the Klan was also intensely anti-Catholic, and that leads us to the very important observation that Catholics followed the spirit of the Declaration of Independence far better than many of their more fanatical Protestant brethren.  And for this reason, Catholics were generally mistrusted and even hated, in the Deep South, because as we’ve pointed out already , we actually do believe that all men are created equal in the sight of God, and that no man has the right to “own” another.  We believe in those unalienable rights, like Liberty for example, endowed by their Creator.  How can any man believe in the Declaration of Independence which says that all men have the unalienable right to Liberty, when blacks were denied that liberty in the most obvious way imaginable? 

Thank God, we’ve come a long way since those dark days of slavery.  And yet, the Democrats seek desperately to prolong the division between blacks and whites by reminding us at every opportunity that racism is part of the essence of being a white man—which of course it isn’t.  Such division is useful to them, as it helps prolong the control they had for so long over the black minority.  “If we can’t own them, we can still buy them.”  They buy their votes with welfare programs, hand-outs, and even free abortions.  With their provocative mantra of racism, they provoke athletes, once proud to represent their nation in the Olympics, to make fools of themselves by putting tee-shirts over their head when the national anthem is played.  People like this, all the ones who will not stand and respect their flag, if they were given the ability for a moment to be articulate, would probably trace their hatred back to our Declaration of Independence, and this unfortunate contradiction between what it says about Liberty and what it nevertheless failed for so long to prevent.

But contempt for our nation’s flag is not the Catholic way.  While we can recognize the same contradiction the ignorant Miss Berry so defiantly points to, rather than lose respect for our country, we are instead motivated all the more to work towards the resolution of such contradictions.  And we have a Constitution that has allowed us to make such progress.  Thanks to presidents like Republican Abraham Lincoln and Catholic John Fitzgerald Kennedy (notwithstanding their other faults), progress has been made.  Slavery has been abolished, the Jim Crow laws have been eradicated, and today blacks are entitled by law to the same freedoms as the rest of us.  They are now recognized truly, at least in law, as equal in the sight of God.

The same, alas, cannot be said for all, and while we have made great strides in race relations, the Democrats have turned to other groups on whom to impose their evil tyranny.  Because among those inalienable rights endowed by our Creator is the Pursuit of Life.  The Right to Life.  Year after year goes by in which millions of unborn babies are denied that right granted by God himself.  In the name of the woman’s Right to the Pursuit of Happiness, the baby’s Right to Life is rejected.  This again is in direct contradiction to the Declaration of Independence.  As Catholics, we approach this contradiction in the right way, by participating in protests such as the March for Life, by voting for Right to Life candidates in the elections, by praying that God will help stop the never-ending slaughter.  It never occurs to us to put a tee-shirt over our head whenever we hear the National Anthem.  We don’t consider for a moment that the best way to stop abortion is by hating and defiling our national flag.

The reason we love and honor the United States of America today, is the same reason we love our wives or husbands.  They may have faults, sometimes even grievous faults, but we still love them in spite of these failings.  We simply work, day after day if we’re given the opportunity, to make them better people.  That’s our main job in marriage, isn’t it?  To bring our better half to the salvation we desire for ourselves.  On this Independence Day, we must recognize our responsibility as citizens to seek the same for our country, to make these United States a haven for all those who seek to enjoy those inalienable rights given us by God, never trampling on these rights of the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the tiny infants huddled in their womb, yearning to be born.  As true Catholics and true Americans, we must give back to God what is rightfully his, and to Caesar what is his, ensuring this country provides for all our citizens the ability to pursue, in the true Catholic sense, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.  Let this be our resolve on this Fourth of July.

I VOW TO THEE MY COUNTRY

 A HYMN FOR INDEPENDENCE DAY

BY CECIL SPRING-RICE, 1918

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.