Prayer for Our Noble Dead

Eternal and ever-loving God, we thank thee for the privilege of meeting on this hallowed day in this free nation and under these spacious skies to honor our noble dead and to rededicate our lives to thee and to our country. We thank thee that we are permitted to live through days of challenge, for the hours of testing in our loyalty to our national heritage, and for our devotion to the high ideals for which our fathers, brothers and sons have surrendered their life.

Bless, O God, the thousands of disabled veterans in our hospitals today. Assuage their pain, ease their suffering, and give them cheer and hope. Help us to respond gladly and generously to their needs of body and spirit. Let thy benediction fall upon our splendid women, the nurses and auxiliary helpers, who suffered with them.

We thank thee for consecrated womanhood. Grant especially thy special favor upon the Gold Star mothers. Give them sustaining grace and divine peace. We remember in prayer our allies.

Grant that they may be kept from disruption and dissension. Save us from distrust and discord. Keep us together in peace as we were one in war. May nothing destroy the fellowship and comradeship which we have known.

Help us to work together and serve together for the cause of humanity and human brotherhood. And help us, O Lord, to keep our poise, Save us from enemies without and from fear within. Give unto us power and wisdom to deal justly and firmly with all who spread seeds of discontent, hatred and disloyalty among us. Keep us from breaking faith with thee and with those who have died.

On this day of sacred memory we ask for grace and power to live truer lives, to be better servants of the living God, finer fathers and mothers, nobler sons and daughters, and more loyal citizens of this great country and of thy world. Lord, grant that we may yet see the day when war and the fear of war shall be no longer, the day when peace shall have become our common possession, the day when thy will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven.

O Lord, hear this our prayer for Christ’s sake. Amen.