memorial day

A prayer for Memorial Day:

We gather this day with hearts and minds filled with gratitude, pride, and sorrow for those men and women who have enabled us to stand on the land of the free.  We look upon their many sacrifices, their sweat and blood, their youth and vigor, their hopes and dreams, their livelihood itself, and with awe and wonder we pause beneath the reverential silence we bring beneath the flag flown at half mast.   

As the flag flies low, our eyes soar upward, seeking the strength that comes from praise, from gratitude, from remembrance.  We ask our Heavenly Father to bestow upon us the grace to remember so we might live a lifeworthy of the sacrifices made lest they be in vain and to bestow upon those men and women who have fallen on the field of battle the grace of eternal rest, that their gift for us might be a gift of peace for themselves for no sacrifice shall go unrewarded and love is never in vain.  

Heavenly Father, countless men and women have generously given their all, though they knew us not and their gift draws us all together this day.  Though strangers they are to us, by their sacrifice they have made us friends with their final breath upon the field of combat, and we pause in silence breathing forth love to make good on this bond of friendship forged by the blood they shed and the wounds they bore.  We set aside this day to remember their valor, their love, their life laid down, and their gift of friendship undeserved, wrought with great adversity and greater compassion for us fellow countrymen.  

Bless us with your mighty hand, and welcome our fallen soldiers  into that promised land,a land that is eternally free, a land that has been open wide for all by the blood of the cross that remains the truest battle of all.  May the victims of wars share in the victory over all.  

Bless us who remain with the strength to carry on; may we live a life of honor so one day we may be reunited with the ones for whom today we pause to remember.  As their names ring out here below may their courage and fidelity gain them entrance into the heavenly choir above.  

Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord and perpetual light shine upon them.  May they rest in the peace they fought to achieve.