By Ven. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
The great French preacher Lacordaire once said that the soldier’s vocation is the closest in dignity to the priesthood, not only because it commissions him to defend justice on the battlefield and order in the field of peace, but also because it calls him to the spirit and intention of sacrifice.
Generally, respect for groups varies according to their number; the more numerous they are, the less they are esteemed. But it is not the same with combat forces. No group equally large is so revered. It is their lofty calling to the defense of justice and freedom that makes them beloved.
It was a soldier who first uttered the words the Church recalls in the Communion: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my servant will be healed.” (Matthew 8:8) The Breviary, which priests read daily, praises Judas Maccabeus, who refused to surrender to superior enemy forces and died saying: “Far be it from us to do such a thing as to flee from them! If our hour has come, let us die bravely for our brothers and let us not leave any reason for our honor to be questioned.” (1 Maccabees 9:10)
Isaiah heard the seraphim around the throne of God address Him as the Lord of Hosts. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6:3) Life is a battle. St. Paul himself said: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7)
In a similar spirit, he charged Timothy: “This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may fight the good fight.” (1 Timothy 1:18) “Take your share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 2:3)
The soldier’s armor in the great battle of life is as follows: “Stand firm, therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the readiness of the gospel of peace; above all, taking up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take also the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” (Ephesians 6:14-17)
There is a war within me: the flesh against the spirit. “I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.” (Romans 7:23) If He who valued life more than anyone did not consider death too high a price to defeat evil, why should I not be willing, in His name, to endure the hardships of military service so that evil may be overcome?
If the Cross of our Savior was proof that there was something wrong in man that could only be remedied by a redemptive death, why should this war not be for me proof that there is something so wrong in the modern world that it can only be remedied by my sacrificed life? I am not fighting for a freedom that means the right to do as I please, but for a freedom that means the right to do what I must.
Duty implies a Law; Law implies an Intelligence; and Intelligence implies God. I am not fighting merely to make the world safe for democracy; I am fighting to preserve the roots of democracy: the moral law rooted not in Power, but in God. I am not fighting for freedom from something, but for freedom for something: the glorious freedom to call my soul my own and then to save it in cooperation with the grace of God.
I am not fighting to preserve the kind of world we had just before this war. If I were, I would be fighting to preserve a world that produced tyrants and dictators. The new world must be a better world than that, or it is not worth fighting for.
It is proverbially believed that sergeants are hard and cruel. They were probably no different at Calvary. It was a Roman sergeant, so accustomed to scenes of blood, who thrust a lance into the side of Christ. But he was converted on that battlefield, and in that very hour declared his faith: “Truly, this is the Son of God.”
Perhaps I too may find Christ on the battlefield. I must not be ashamed if I am afraid and if my whole being shrinks in dread, for the Lord in the Garden, before going to the Battle of Calvary, prayed: “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39) What I must fear is my unwillingness to fulfill the will of God revealed by the present circumstances of life.
Not my will, but Thine be done. Though a battlefield be the uttermost confusion, though bullets be as thick as raindrops, though I be one among a million in a vast cauldron of steel and fire, I am still, in the eyes of God, a person with an immortal destiny: “Even the hairs of his head are all numbered.”
“Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not to ask for any reward save that of knowing that we do Thy will through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (St. Ignatius of Loyola)
In war, all an enemy can do is attack my body. Do I ever feel fear when an enemy attacks my soul?
Excerpt from the Wartime Prayer Book by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.
About the author
Ven. Fulton John Sheen was born in El Paso, Illinois, on May 8, 1895. He attended Saint Paul Seminary in Minnesota and was ordained in 1919. After pursuing advanced studies at the Catholic University, he earned a doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. In 1930, Msgr. Sheen began a Sunday night radio program, “The Catholic Hour,” and in 1951 then-Bishop Sheen launched “Life Is Worth Living,” which became one of the highest-rated television programs in the United States and earned him an Emmy Award in 1952. He was elevated to archbishop by Pope Paul VI in 1969. He died on December 9, 1979. He was declared Venerable Servant of God by Pope Benedict XVI on July 28, 2012.