The Annual Remembrance Service in Liverpool is a poignant reminder of the many lives that were lost in the wars, remembering especially the Armed Forces and the Merchant Navy. The memorial on the Pier Head remembers the 1,408 members of the Merchant Navy whose lives were lost at sea transporting vital materials for war, oil and food supplies. We will remember them and the lives which they gave as a sacrifice for others and for us.

 

I have a small photograph of my grandfather, John Sherrington from Preston, published in the Preston Herald when he was invalided back from France in 1917. He served on a Heavy Trench Mortar Battery. He went to France in April 1916 and was there for 16 months before he was gassed and invalided back to Hinckley. The horror of gas is described by Wilfred Owen, “Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.” It was in the calm of Hinckley that he met my grandmother, a woman from a Catholic family of six girls who visited the soldiers. In 1911, my grandfather was listed in the census as an ‘inmate’ at St Edward’s College, Everton, so it is a small world! He gave me the rosary I treasure, which he carried with him in France. It reminds me of the power of Our Lady’s protection that brought him home. I invite you to renew your prayer of the rosary.

 

As we see today, the tragic situation of war and conflict around the world, Pope Leo urgently invites us to pray for peace. In his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, he speaks of the ways in which we are invited to build a civilisation of love rather than a world dominated by power relationships and constantly at war with itself and with one another. Again and again, he calls for disarmament. It is a call to disarm our words, and so be builders of peace in our daily relationships. It is a call to disarm AI, to keep the human person centre stage and prevent AI from dominating humanity. It is a call to urge politicians to find new ways of resolving conflict between nations and disarming the nations.

 

This month we pray for peace in our world. Our Lady Queen of Peace pray for us.