Grant her eternal rest, Oh Lord, and let your perpetual light shine upon her.

One of the most interesting things of the “Band of Brothers” series were the interviews with the aging veterans. Men who saw friends killed and killed other men themselves and through it all remained decent and honorable men. You could see it etched on their faces.

I saw the same thing with family members who had gone to war. I never knew that one of my grandfathers fought in the Battle of the Bulge until near the end of his life. I could never pry any stories out of him beyond a comment that it was “interesting.” My spouse’s grandfather never discussed his war experiences even after a closet cleaning dislodged a shoe box full of medals. They saw terrible things, and perhaps worse, did terrible things, yet it did not break them. They returned from war and built lives so genteel that non who knew them best could envision them as lethal warriors.

At the risk of declaiming “”O tempora, O mores!” I do wonder if we have lost some of that strength. It seems we expect people to crumble under stress and that we expect that traumatic events will control a person’s life from then on.

Thanks be to God for the martyrs, white and red, who have transmitted the faith to us for twenty centuries by their witness.