Military Cemeteries are fascinating places, especially in France, where you see well-manicured lawns with white gravestones all aligned with each other. Reading the gravestones, you soon discover the youthful age of the deceased and if known, their names and religious affiliation. Not infrequent is the inscription ‘known unto God’, a phrase that the British poet Rudyard Kipling used in the First World War, and a phrase that gave honour to the unknown soldier, sailor or aircrew, who had died in battle.
It also provided families who grieved a missing son, father, brother or uncle whose body has never been found or identified, an opportunity to visit a location where their loved one was last seen alive. Families found comfort in the knowledge that every fallen member – known or unknown, was acknowledged in their ultimate sacrifice.
On ANZAC Day the nation not only pauses to commemorate the fallen, usually at the Dawn Service, but it also provides the opportunity for Australians to acknowledge in gratitude those men and women who have or continue to serve our nation in the Australian Defence Force.
It is a gratitude that speaks of service, of self-sacrifice and the willingness, if required, to give one’s life. This willing self-sacrifice is steeped in Christian understanding as one is called to do great things in God for our brothers and sisters.
In country towns, in our suburbs and in our capital cities, simple ceremonies will take place around local cenotaphs with a tenacity that honours the various stories of enduring courage and of mateship that the first ANZACs displayed on the Gallipoli Peninsula and on the Western Front in France.
While ANZAC Day is about remembering the dead, lamenting the loss of life due to war, it is also a time to remember the lessons learnt, and what our nation has inherited from the first ANZACs when we are confronted with natural disasters such as cyclones, floods and bush fires, or circumstances where our freedoms and common values are under attack. This has been called the ANZAC spirit.
This year our ANZAC Day events will have a more poignant remembrance as we hold up in memory the deaths of so many innocents in Ukraine and other countries currently experiencing civil unrest.
As Catholics, it is a time to pray for peace. It is a time to work for peace. It is a time to learn from the lessons of history, so often written with the blood of the ‘unknown dead’. We all have a responsibly to honour the living and the dead, known and unknown, because our story is lived through the prism of the Risen Christ, who came to serve and not to be served.
Author: Monsignor Stuart Hall, Parish Priest at Malvern East.
