Armistice Day & Remembrance Sunday 2011

We today who have not known the horrors of all-out war at first hand owe it to the millions of Fallen, to those who made the ultimate sacrifice, to those who fought for their country, for the freedoms we enjoy today, to remember them and to honour their memory. Their sacrifice should make us think how lucky we are.

Many of the Fallen were young men barely out of their teens, who still had the whole of their lives ahead of them, fresh-faced youths who would never mature and age, never rear a family, never know the many pleasures of life lived to the full. Barely out of school or college, they were thrust into the unspeakable brutality and cruelty of bloody armed conflict. They were truly the lost generation. 


The somewhat pampered youth of today who want everything and want it instantly, with all their electronic  gadgetry and fashion accessories, would do well to ponder in moments such as these the fate of those millions of other youths who never even had the chance of a real life. Never has a generation of young people been so privileged, so spoilt and so well-off as the present one, with parents who bend over backwards to satisfy their every whim and wish.

Though we may live in a world of plenty and lack for nothing - with some glaring exceptions in Africa and Asia -  our insatiable appetite for ever more material acquisitions is never quenched. Today's youth in particular, unlike their peers in earlier times when little could be taken for granted, are strong on their rights and privileges and quick to claim what they believe to be theirs for the taking, but are reluctant and diffident when it comes to assuming their responsibilities and obligations towards society. 

As we pay tribute to those legions of brave men who put themselves in direct harm's way in foreign lands, who faced the spectre of sudden death on the battlefield and who did not live to see their loved ones back home and to tell the tale, we would all do well to get things into perspective and count our blessings. For there but for the grace of God go we. 

I salute the many thousands of brave soldiers who responded to the call of duty regardless of the cost and I pay homage to both those that came back and those that did not. They were heroes and as such amply deserve to be commemorated and remembered as a shining example of self-sacrifice to all men and women everywhere.


This coming Sunday is what we call Remembrance Sunday, when there will be a formal ceremony of commemoration at the memorial erected to the memory of the victims of war, known as the Cenotaph, which will be attended by the Queen and other members of the royal family and by the prime minster, the leaders of the other political parties, war veterans and by dignitaries from many other countries. It will be, as always, a very solemn occasion but also a very moving one, an appropriate homage to the Fallen.

Easter Thoughts

Here we are again at another Easter and, whether you're a believer or not, it is the commemoration of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the founder of Christiany, and it is also the hope and promise of everlasting life. Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross for all humanity and we mark this occasion every year, as has been done for thousands of years now by Christians all round the world. Like it or loathe it, Easter is celebrated in church halls up and down the country and at many other venues and, like Christmas, it is a time of the year when perhaps a little pause for reflexion and stock-taking would not go amiss in the hustle and bustle of our ever-more hectic lives. So what is the Christmas message exactly and have we lived up to it in our modern-day world?

I would first like to make it clear that in trying to understand the significance of Easter, I am not advocating any particular philosophy, doctrine or belief, and that I am addressing both believers and non-believers. My purpose is not to attempt to convert anyone to Christianity but to make some general observations on where we stand today on the whole subject of Easter. So I am not preaching at anyone, just conveying my own personal thoughts.

Around 2,000 years ago a man called Jesus taught us how to lead a good life, how to conduct ourselves and how to treat our fellow man. And he was prepared to back up his beliefs by sacrificing himself. In doing so he hoped that mankind would learn the lesson and embark on the path that he had set before us, the path to a better life, the path to justice, selflessness, love and righteousness. So how are we doing so far?

It seems that we have misunderstood Jesus's message somewhere along the way and we've created a society of greed, gluttony, vanity, avarice, and selfishness, with Money as our God and its pursuit as our life's aim.  This has always been the case, of course, just as in Jesus's time, but now I think we have perfected a society of greed and gluttony and, with no longer any belief in God to curb our appetites and our overweening ambition, we can give free rein to the dictates of our avarice and egotism with no pangs of conscience to hold us back. Anything that matters has a price on it and anything that cannot be priced is valueless, not to say worthless. We only seem to understand the intrinsic worth of anything if it bears a price tag.

Though we appear to prize human virtues and praise moral rectitude, the truth of the matter is that  beyond wanting the well-being of people who contribute to our happiness and well-being in life and without whom even wealth would be meaningless, again a purely selfish motive when you really think about it, our life is given over to self-enrichment and self-promotiion and there is little of Christianity or any other doctrine of selflessness and self-sacrifice. Jesus may have sacrificed himself for humanity, for us, for the salvation of mankind and the world, but we would not sacrifice a a hair on our head if it meant foregoing one of our creature comforts. 

But the truly frightening thing when one considers the Easter story in a modern context is that if Jesus were to come upon this earth again, he could expect a similar reception and a similar outcome. Though he would not be crucified today, some other method of death would probably await him, perhaps in the manner of Martin Luther King or Gandhi, so as to silence him forever.  After all, everything that Jesus preached would be an attack on our society as it exists today and would harm the financial interests of practically everyone. Only the poor and the dispossessed would be likely to welcome his message, but of course power does not lie with them and, as in Jesus's time when Rome ruled the Holy Land, it would be the rich and powerful who would be the effective instrument of his downfall and dispatch.

(to be completed)