Remembrance Day
One of the most wonderful things about being in the United Kingdom is the way that churches and communities celebrate Remembrance Day, 11 November, also of course known as Armistice Day. This was the day in 1918 when, at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month, the guns on the Western Front fell silent as the Allied Powers and Germany signed the armistice, and peace began to return to Europe with the end of the First World War. In the United States the day in known as Veterans Day. I have been in the UK for three years of Remembrance Day services, and I have been immensely moved at each one I have attended. In part, this is because of the way that many people are drawn into the church on this particular day, when they would not usually otherwise attend. (In fact, a good friend of mine only attends church once a year on Remembrance Sunday.) Additionally, while we have memorials to those who died in the Great War in the US, in the UK they are everywhere and the number of people who gave their lives from this country is staggering. I remember the memorials at my college at Cambridge that listed a fairly sizable percentage of several years worth of students – this country really lost a whole generation of young men.
This year, we had the annual College Feast on 11 November and celebrated a Solemn Eucharist beforehand for the feast day of St. Martin of Tours in our college chapel with our guest The Right Revered the Lord Bishop of Durham, Dr. Tom Wright. St. Martin was a fourth century saint who was impressed into military service as a young man in the Roman army, and whose first work of mercy was to cut his military cloak in half to give part away to a freezing man who came up to him begging outside the gates of Amiens. That night he had a vision of Jesus and was soon baptized. He later became bishop of Tours and was well-known during his lifetime for miracles of healing and exorcism.
I was talking with the bishop after the service and he wondered aloud whether the feast of St. Martin had been placed on 11 November deliberately in the 20th century in order to reflect on Armistice Day, since he is one of the few soldier-saints in the history of the church. I did some research into the matter and discovered that in fact, 11 November is the date in 397 either when St. Martin died, or when he was buried in the Cemetery of the Poor at Tours, having died on 8 November. (There seems to be some disagreement about the specifics of the matter.) It does indeed appear to be a happy, or perhaps very interesting, coincidence that this particular soldier-saint is commemorated on that particular day, and it certainly will give me pause for thought on future Remembrance Days.
