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Time goes by very quickly. Eighty years ago today, 156,000 young men - about half of them Americans - waded ashore along five beaches in France. They marched directly into bloody combat with 50,000 German soldiers. Before the sun set on June 6, 1944, the beaches were secure and the campaign to free Western Europe from Nazi occupation was underway.
The events on those Normandy Beaches echo to this day. Had the June 6 landings not succeeded, World War II would have certainly lasted much longer. it is even possible that the friendly, prosperous and mostly peaceful Western Europe that was formed after the war ended would never have existed either.
These are things we can be thankful for on this June 6 even as we keep in mind the thousands who died on both sides of the beachhead. To put another way: As Christians, it is appropriate to give thanks for military success. One of Christianity's first theologians, Tertullian, said it like this in his Apology explaining and defending Christian practice around 200 AD: "We pray for security to the empire... for brave armies, a faithful senate, a virtuous people, the world at rest."
That said, living our Christian faith is never dependent on national military victory, much less subordinated to it. While we as Christians sometimes use the language of battle and conflict as a shorthand to talk about how we follow Jesus, we must always do so firm in the knowledge that the ultimate and climatic battle between Good and Evil, when our hearts and souls hung in the balance, is not either ongoing or ahead of us, but behind us. That battle took place when Jesus hung on the cross. When he said "It is Finished!" it was finished. Now, whatever we face, The strife is o'er, the battle done; Now is the Victor's triumph won."
Amen and God bless,
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