The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-08-21

of Gods heroes, the peace makers. Peacemakers have always been men strongly in love with God. men who lave so loved justice that they are ready to spend and be spent, that His order might reign, that peace might prevail.
 And today, our nation is paying honor to the peacemakers< of today: the boys and men of our nation who went to war to gain the peace. Yes, peace has come but you and I will never know at which this peace has been purchased, we who live so far from hattlefields and detonating bombs and falling flak. and the smell of explosives. We only know that it has come. Thanks be to God, for giving us men and women so ready to sacrifice, for making them it to endure this siege, the most terrible in human history:
 Keep The Peace
 If it is a great duty to fight for peace, no less sacred is the duty of keeping the peace. And that is the work that all of us are now pledged to do--to keep the peace. The ques- tion our age will have to answer before the judgment seat of God is: What kind of peace have we moulded? What kind shall it be? Will it be a peace of this worlds making, a peace that is more of an interlude between wars, based on shifting poles of expediency, a peace of power politics, in which only the large nations will have a say, a peace based on physical force alone? If it is, then 1t is not worth fight ing for, it was not worth winning!
 The peace we want is the peace of God, based on the Christian policies of justice and charity to all men. Here is our duty on the home front. We must be alive to the peace proposals and not be afraid to voice our disapproval if they are not Christian policies. We must not turn away from our duty. We must be alert to the peace settlements that we and our Allies will make.
 But Gods peacemakers use not only the weapons forged in our factories. They are strong when they use the spiritual weapons of prayer and charity. And all of us can pray. We who are at home, let us pray for the welfare of the world, for the guidance of our na- tional leader, the president.
 And as we see the young men and older ones coming home from all the countries of the world, by transport plane, by convoy ship, let us pray then for them: that as they have been peacemakers at home. Men, filled with the love of God, ready to put all that energy into the building up Of peace be- tween nations, of peace between states and cities, of peace in the family. And how can that be brought about? What is the most effective spiritual weapon for keep ing the peace? It is the charity of Christ. Charity that will keep peace as nothing else can. There have been instruments to measure the energy of the most powerful weapon known to man, the atomic bomb; but there is no instrument that can record the effect of one act of charity, one act done for the love of God.
 St. Theresa tells us that you can save a soul, if you pick up a pin out of love of God. That is the force of divine charity. Keep charity in your heart and you will keep the peace. For God will not withhold his peace from those who are united to. him by the bars of chari- ty.
 Ingrates Hit
 This is a day of universal thanks giving. We have SO much to be thankful for. We can not make too many acts of thanksgiving before our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. God has granted us a peace and if we fail to give thanks we are cast from the same die as the nine lepers in today's Gospel, we are ingrates.