M Y Very Dear Brethren: I cannot tell you how instant and how present thought of you has been to me throughout the months of suffering and of mourning through which we have passed. I had to leave you abruptly on the 20th of August in order to fulfill my last duty toward the beloved and venerated Pope whom we have lost, and in order to discharge an obligation of the conscience from which I could not dispense myself, in the election of the successor of Pius X., the Pontiff who now directs the Church under the title, full of promise and of hope, of Benedict XV.
It was in Rome itself that I received the tidings—stroke after stroke—of the partial destruction of the Cathedral Church of Louvain, next of the burning of the library and of the scientific installations of our great university and of the devastation of the city, and next of the wholesale shooting of citizens, and tortures inflicted upon women and children and upon unarmed and undefended men.
And, while I was still under the shock of these calamities, the telegraph brought us news of the bombardment of our beautiful metropolitan church, of the Church of Nôtre Dame au dela la Dyle, of the episcopal palace, and of a great part of our dear City of Malines.
Afar from my diocese, without means of communication with you, I was compelled to lock my grief within my own afflicted heart and to carry it, with the thought of you, which never left me, to the foot of the Crucifix.
I craved courage and light, and sought them in such thoughts as these: A disaster has visited the world, and our beloved little Belgium, a nation so faithful in the great mass of her population to God, so upright in her patriotism, so noble in her King and Government, is the first sufferer. She bleeds; her sons are stricken down within her fortresses and upon her fields, in defense of her rights and of her territory.
Soon there will not be one Belgian family not in mourning. Why all this sorrow, my God? Lord, Lord, hast Thou forsaken us? Then I looked upon the Crucifix. I looked upon Jesus, most gentle and humble Lamb of God, crushed, clothed in His blood as in a garment, and I thought I heard from His own mouth the words which the psalmist uttered in His name: "O God, my God, look upon me; why hast Thou forsaken me? O my God, I shall cry, and Thou wilt not hear."
And forthwith the murmur died upon my lips, and I remembered what our Divine Saviour said in His gospel: "The disciple is not above the master, nor the servant above his lord." The Christian is the servant of a God who became man in order to suffer and to die.
To rebel against pain, to revolt against Providence because it permits grief and bereavement, is to forget whence we came, the school in which we have been taught, the example that each of us carries graven in the name of a Christian, which each of us honors at his hearth, contemplates at the altar of his prayers, and of which he desires that his tomb, the place of his last sleep, shall bear the sign.
My dearest brethren, I shall return by and by to the providential law of suffering, but you will agree that since it has pleased a God-made man who was holy, innocent, without stain, to suffer and to die for us who are sinners, who are guilty, who are perhaps criminals, it ill becomes us to complain whatever we may be called upon to endure. The truth is that no disaster on earth, striking creatures only, is comparable with that which our sins provoked and whereof God Himself chose to be the blameless victim.
Having recalled to mind this fundamental truth, I find it easier to summon you to face what has befallen us and to speak to you simply and directly of what is your duty and of what may be your hope. That duty I shall express in two words—patriotism and endurance.