Their name liveth for evermore

In those days [the 15th century] the fallen in a war made up a company of persons able to be individually known.  A village here, a village there would mourn a fallen soldier, and the priest would offer sacrifice for his repose.  Now the lists are too much even to run one's eyes through, and our imaginations are broken against the obstacle of a hideous arithmetic, where no significant difference seems to be made by the addition of a nought or two to the right hand side of the row.  And these men are to be mourned, if mourned, by cities, not villages; cities which can hold public parades and make gestures of homage, but can neither love nor know their dead - Austin Farrer, 'The Villages of Heaven' (preached in All Souls' Chapel not long after the war of 1939), in Said or Sung.

Yes, a "hideous arithmetic" was at work in the Great War of 1914-18. I wonder, however, about Farrer's apparent conclusion.  Is it the case that the "hideous arithmetic" had the last word?

Parish churches across these Islands suggest otherwise, with memorials to those of the parish who served and fell in the Great War. Here there is remembrance on a local scale. Here surnames are still recognised, stories still told.  Here there is yet a sense of 'us', 'we'.  Here these dead are loved.

... the only reason why the name Memorials or Monuments is given to those sepulchres of the dead which become specially distinguished, is that they recall to memory, and by putting in mind cause us to think of, them who by death are withdrawn from the eyes of the living, that they may not by forgetfulness be also withdrawn from men's hearts - Augustine On the Care of the Dead.

How we remember is a further refutation of the "hideous arithmetic".  In many memorials to those who fell in the Great War, there is an inscription - 'Their name liveth for evermore'.  The words, of course, are from the Authorized Version's translation of Ecclesiasticus 44:14.  Names are not lost, cannot be lost.  This is Farrer's point as he goes on to explain why the Church prayerfully remembers the departed:

So every soul that has passed out of this visible world, as well as every soul remaining within it, is caught and held in the unwavering beam of divine care.

This is why Remembrance Sunday is no distraction from the Church's mission, why it is not an event to be (at best) reluctantly tolerated by clergy who think that the Third Sunday before Advent is significantly more important.

Remembrance Sunday is a proclamation of Christian hope over and against the "hideous arithmetic".  It is why the crosses, and inscriptions from the Scriptures, and prayers matter.  They proclaim that the mystery of the Lord's Cross and Resurrection touches and transfigures even this - the trenches, the losses, the national grief.

And, yes, it is the affirmation that pro patria can be an expression of love of neighbour, that - in accordance with Christian teaching over the centuries - "it is lawful for Christian men, at the commandment of the Magistrate, to wear weapons, and serve in the wars", that sacrifice on the field of battle can be a witness to greater love.

For the Church to withdraw from Remembrance-tide would be at odds with Christian practice over centuries, the prayerful remembrance of those who died in battle. It would, in other words, be a failure to live out the Church's hope in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

Such a sectarian protest 'against Christendom' would actually be a failure to proclaim the Lord's Resurrection in the face of a great loss which still grips the cultural imagination.  It would be to surrender the cultural imagination to an empty secularism and its hollow pieties, or to chauvinist emotions, or to a nihilist acceptance of the "hideous arithmetic".

Which brings us back to those memorials in parish churches throughout the land, to the war memorials in towns, villages and cities at which Christian prayer will be offered this Sunday.  This is what the Church does when men fall in battle.  We prayerfully remember names before the God who holds all souls in life, in whom each name 'liveth for evermore'.

The stained glass window shown here is in memory of a young captain in the Royal Inskilling Fusiliers, mortally wounded in September 1916.  Some may mock the armour, the neo-medieval appearance, not unusual in windows commemorating a son or husband who died in the Great War.  The artists, the families, the comrades knew all too well that the armour of knights was not worn, that the trenches did not have the appearance of the age of chivalry.  They were, however, articulating a richer, deeper vision.  Of a Christian practice stretching across the centuries, prayerfully remembering the fallen in battle; of the dignity which the Church has long recognised in military service; of a name held by Love Eternal, redeemed from a "hideous arithmetic" and the horrors of no-man's land.

... we in our village of prayer reach out and touch the prayers of other villages, and make our act of faith in Christ, the master of all our prayers; Christ who is able to inspire all the villages of his people with the spirit of prayer, and so to unite their prayers in himself, that the whole estate of his church is benefited and edified - Austin Farrer.