I exhort you to persevere in this ministry of peace, which is for you
the sanest form of patriotism; to accept with all your hearts the
privations you have to endure; to simplify still further, if it is
possible, your way of life. One of you who is reduced by robbery and
pillage to a state bordering on total destitution, said to me lately: "I
am living now as I wish I had lived always."
Multiply the efforts of your charity, corporal and spiritual. Like the
great Apostle, do you endure daily the cares of your Church, so that no
man shall suffer loss and you not suffer loss, and no man fall and you
not burn with zeal for him. Make yourselves the champions of all those
virtues enjoined upon you by civic honor as well as by the Gospel of
Christ.
"Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just,
whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be
any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things." So may
the worthiness of our lives justify us, my most dear colleagues, in
repeating the noble claim of St. Paul: "The things which ye have learned
and received and heard and seen in me, these do ye, and the God of Peace
shall be with you."
Let us continue then, dearest brethren, to pray, to do penance, to
attend holy mass, and to receive holy communion for the sacred intention
of our dear country.... I recommend parish priests to hold a funeral
service on behalf of our fallen soldiers on every Saturday.
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