The Episcopal Bishop of the Armed Forces offers a prayer for Veterans’ Day:
Today we remember all of our veterans past and present. We ask for the healing of those who have been wounded in body and soul, wounds both visible and invisible. We pray for those who have returned and those who are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, for those who served in Vietnam, Korea and World War II and live with injured bodies and traumatized spirits to receive your solace and healing.
We ask that those who are unable to pray for themselves will receive the blessings of our prayers offered on their behalf. Bring peace to those places where our women and men have fought. Bless those who served in non-combatant roles. May their service continue in their lives and may that service be positive for all of us.
Give us the vision to see a world in which all grow weary with war and fighting, and turn their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. These things we ask in the name of the Prince of Peace. Amen.” ~ Rt. Rev. James “Jay” Magness, Episcopal Bishop of the Armed Forces
The Church of England marks Remembrance Day:
Almighty and eternal God,
from whose love in Christ we cannot be parted,
either by death or life:
hear our prayers and thanksgivings for all who we remember this day
fulfil in them the purpose of your love;
and bring us all with them, to your eternal joy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
The Church of Scotland asks forgiveness:
Remember Ypres, Gallipoli, the Somme, Mons and Verdun. Remember the Western Desert, El Alamein, the
Normandy beaches. Remember Coventry, Dresden, Hiroshima and the Burma Road. Remember Korea, the
Falkland Islands, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, East Timor, Afghanistan and the Gulf.
Remember the courage, the comradeship, the ingenuity, the spirit of working together for a common cause,
the planning together for a better world that would come with peace.
Remember the call to arms, the patriotic songs, the partings which were such sweet sorrow. The sound of the
drum, the skirl of the pipe, the prayer that God would be on our side.
Remember the carnage; the colossal horror of war. Remember the widows of sixty years and more, the old
men and women who never knew their fathers. Remember the love that was lost, the wisdom wasted, the
minds that are still pained by memories. Remember the families bereft by recent wars and conflict.
Remember this day the children who will die while nation fights nation. Remember the One who asked us to
remember them.
Father, remember us; and forgive us our sins against you and our fellow man.
Throughout the nations, at 11:11 today, silence will fall.
They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.*
*”The Ode,” which has become a traditional part of Remembrance Day observances around the world, comes from the fourth stanza of a WWI poem, “For the fallen,” by Laurence Binyon (1869-1943).