Pray daily, my brethren, for these 250,000 and for their leaders to
victory; pray for our brothers in arms; pray for the fallen; pray for
those who are still engaged; pray for the recruits who are making ready
for the fight to come.
In your name I send them the greeting of our fraternal sympathy and our
assurance that not only do we pray for the success of their arms and for
the eternal welfare of their souls, but that we also accept for their
sake all the distress, whether physical or moral, that falls to our own
share in the oppression that hourly besets us, and all that the future
may have in store for us, in humiliation for a time, in anxiety, and in
sorrow. In the day of final victory we shall all be in honor; it is just
that today we should all be in grief.
To judge by certain rumors that have reached me, I gather that from
districts that have had least to suffer some bitter words have arisen
toward our God, words which, if spoken with cold calculation, would not
be far from blasphemous.
Oh, all too easily do I understand how natural instinct rebels against
the evils that have fallen upon Catholic Belgium. The spontaneous
thought of mankind is ever that virtue should have its instantaneous
crown and injustice its immediate retribution.
But the ways of God are not our ways, the Scripture tells us. Providence
gives free course, for a time measured by Divine wisdom, to human
passions and the conflict of desires.
Pages:
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140