Knightly News

At the recent all-school Peace Day celebration, Father Patrick unveiled the Episcopal Peace Pole with the words “May Peace Prevail on Earth” inscribed on it in a range of languages representing those spoken among the Episcopal community. The Peace Pole will serve as a reminder of Episcopal’s commitment to peace and be incorporated into a space on campus. At the celebration, Father Patrick also reflected on the role that students, faculty, staff and families have in cultivating peace. We invite you to read the message below.

He shall judge between the nations

and shall arbitrate for many peoples;

they shall beat their swords into plowshares

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation;

neither shall they learn war any more.

                                                Isaiah 2:4

Albert Einstein said, “Peace is not merely the absence of conflict …” We stand here today at The Episcopal School of Baton Rouge to assert not merely a desire for the end of conflict but our commitment to the ministry of reconciliation and to being instruments of Peace.

On November 14, 1940, German bombers attacked Coventry, England, and its ancient cathedral was destroyed into an empty shell.

In the ruins of the Cathedral the next morning, the medieval roofing nails were fused into crosses by the inferno. Behind the High Altar, someone had taken a blackened timber and wrote the words “Father Forgive” on the wall. These words solidified in the leadership of Coventry Cathedral the prayer that Jesus made from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The melted crosses of nails became a symbol of this call to forgiveness and reconciliation.

Later in the War, in four raids between February 13 and 15,1945, over a thousand heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces dropped nearly 4,000 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the German city of Dresden. The bombing and the resulting firestorm destroyed more than 1,600 acres of the city center, and up to 25,000 people were killed.

Soon after the war ended, these two cities, Coventry and Dresden, seeking to hasten reconciliation to follow a peace won by war, founded the Community of the Cross of Nails. This international organization, still active in bringing peace and reconciliation to the world today, helped to transition the people of Europe from hate and revenge to reconciliation, bringing unity to a continent recently torn by war.

We bring so much of our community’s energies and resources to the wise policies and initiatives of respect, dignity, and peace. But on this International Day of Peace, let us commit to do more than that. Behind the sheltered safety of our privileged lives as Americans, let us not settle merely for the absence of conflict, but rather let us dedicate ourselves to the pursuit of reconciliation, ourselves becoming what Saint Francis called “instruments of peace.”
Each day in chapters of the Community of the Cross of Nails around the world, in places of peace and places of strife, a “Litany of Reconciliation” is prayed. This Litany, a prayer of verses and response, recalls the words written on the walls of the ruined cathedral, those of Christ on the cross: “Father Forgive.”

As your Head Chaplain, I hope we may one day start a chapter of the Community of the Cross of Nails in our school. I helped to lead a chapter at the Cathedral of Saint Philip in Atlanta, and I have seen firsthand what even a small group of committed “instruments of peace” can do to bring a profound change to a community. By beginning with the absence of conflict and building on that toward reconciliation, we go past Albert Einstein’s warning. We make ourselves “instruments of peace” by facing the root causes of conflict in ourselves and in the world and accept our culpability in these things, our need for God’s forgiveness and that of our neighbors, as we offer our own forgiveness as sinners who have ourselves been given the ultimate reconciliation in the forgiveness of our sins through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I hope that we can make this Litany of Reconciliation a part of our community’s life. It should remind us of the roots of conflict while we give and receive forgiveness for ourselves.

The Litany of Reconciliation

Leader: All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class,

People: Father, forgive.

Leader: The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own,

People: Father, forgive.

Leader: The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth,

People: Father, forgive.

Leader: Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others,

People: Father, forgive.

Leader: Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugee,

People: Father, forgive.

Leader: The lust which dishonors the bodies of men, women and children,

People: Father, forgive.

Leader: The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and not in God,

People: Father, forgive.

Leader: Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

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