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long wilt Thou suffer the pride of this iniquity? Or wilt Thou finally
justify the impious opinion that Thou carest no more for the work of Thy
hands? A shock from a thunderbolt, and behold, all human foresight is
set at nought! Europe trembles upon the brink of destruction!

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Many are the thoughts that throng the breast of man today, and the chief
of them all is this:

God reveals Himself as the Master. The nations that made the attack, and
the nations that are warring in self-defense, alike confess themselves
to be in the hand of Him without Whom nothing is made, nothing is done.

Men long unaccustomed to prayer are turning again to God. Within the
army, within the civil world, in public, and within the individual
conscience, there is prayer. Nor is that prayer today a word learned by
rote, uttered lightly by the lip; it surges from the troubled heart, it
takes the form, at the feet of God, of the very sacrifice of life. The
being of man is a whole offering to God. This is worship, this is the
fulfillment of the primal moral and religious law--the Lord thy God
shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve.

And even those who murmur, and whose courage is not sufficient for
submission to the hand that smites us and saves us, even these
implicitly acknowledge God to be the Master, for if they blaspheme Him,
they blaspheme Him for His delay in closing with their desires.

But as for us, my brethren, we will adore Him in the integrity of our
souls. Not yet do we see in all its magnificence the revelation of His
wisdom, but our faith trusts Him with it all. Before His justice we are
humble, and in His mercy hopeful. With holy Tobias we know that because
we have sinned He has chastised us, but because He is merciful He will
save us.

It would perhaps be cruel to dwell upon our guilt now, when we are
paying so well and no nobly what we owe. But shall we not confess that
we have indeed something to expiate? He who has received much, from him
shall much be required. Now dare we say that the moral and religious
standard of our people has risen as its economic prosperity has risen?
The observance of Sunday rest, the Sunday mass, the reverence for
marriage, the restraints of modesty--what had you made of these?

What, even within Christian families, had become of the simplicity
practiced by our fathers, what of the spirit of penance, what of respect
for authority? And