"TIMES TRY OUR SOULS"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 208, 3 September 1942, Page 4

"TIMES TRY OUR SOULS"

"These are times that try our souls," said Bishop Liston at Mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral this morning, in calling upon the people to rededicate themselves to duty and sacrifice in the war. Bishop Liston continued: "Our mind is bewildered as it forms a picture of the world's sadness, the breaking up of homes and the separation of families, the destruction of towns and cities,

death with its harvest of victims, our fellow men by the million in many a land beaten to the ground and thrown into the slavery of work lor the oppressor, the growth of hatred and brutality, and the onslaught, fierce and blasphemous, on the supreme rights of God and the sacred things of our Christian faith.

"It is indeed a vision to appal, and our safeguard and strength is God Our Father. If in the height of our anguish we ask why God does not send a .-iKn from heaven to confound the authors of the woes that have fallen on the world and to open up the way of peace and order, we turn to the light that our faith throws upon this mystery. We do not ask for signs and wonders, but we believe. and a thousand experiences of life confirm our belief, that God is pood and in His own wise and loving way has care of us. We believe He is eternal and has eternal plans for us. We understand that though the walls of the world. His gift of home to us, are rough and unfinished, yet within them we live as children of the good God, and self-respect, courage, peace and great destiny is ours. We see that the supreme evil is not suffering and war but sin. and that death is not the end of joy and life and love but the beginning of all these things, the start of our full and lasting happiness."