Anzac Day
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
25 Apr 2004
A couple of years ago I led the Anzac Day religious service at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Rome. It was a perfect spring morning with a light breeze, under the ancient Aurelian walls of the city built well over fifteen hundred years ago. As always this sacred site was immaculately preserved, clipped lawns, beautiful flowers coming to bud around a large cross with the sword of honour at its centre.
Across Australia and everywhere there are significant numbers of Australians overseas, we gather to celebrate Anzac Day; as we gather on no other day for any national celebration.
I have visited the graves of our war dead in Port Moresby, Rabaul, the Middle East and the vast military cemeteries in France. Most of those buried were little more than boys. Some of them were only boys, many with names like those of our neighbours and our relations.
In all these visits I have been struck by the tragedy of their young deaths, the powerful example of their sacrifice as they lie there in their hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands to await the resurrection.
Only the very young or the very foolish glorify war. I have never met an ex-soldier who did and certainly this is not the purpose of Anzac Day.
When the First World War ended the nation of Australia was still a teenager, and about 60,000 Australians died in this “The Great War” to end all wars; 15,000 New Zealanders died, 2000 more than Belgium.
Different Australian groups, English and Irish, Catholic and Protestant, were united after this common suffering in a way they had never been previously.
The threat to the Australian mainland was much greater in the Second World War but the horror of those battles has only reinforced and not replaced the Anzac mythology, this teenage nightmare.
A brother priest who was in the air force in the Second World War wrote that the conversation at reunions was much more about grandchildren and arthritis, those who died recently, rather than the heroics of war.
He explained that there is nothing so basic as facing the prospect of almost certain death. The bonds between those who did this together, once, a few or many times (perhaps particularly when they were volunteers) are strange and remarkably strong. For many nothing in their later lives reached that level of intensity. Some believed their later lives were lived on borrowed time.
Most Australians today have not known active service at war. We pray this continues. Why then do we gather on Anzac Day?
The answer is simple. We gather to do our duty, to express our gratitude to those brave enough to put their lives at risk for our freedoms, to remind ourselves and especially the young that our freedoms have been won and defended the hard way and might have to be defended again.
Lest we forget.
