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Good morning from Afghanistan.  I once met an old man in a railway station looking quite bewildered.  'I just got married' he said.  'That's great.'  I replied.  'She's much younger than me,' he continued 'and all she wants to do is to make love to me and to look after me.'  'That can't be so bad!' I replied, 'but why do you look so downcast?'  He answered: 'I can't remember where I stay.'

Memory, individual and collective, is key to sustaining life's multicoloured palette.  Memory can be sorrowful and destructive but it can also be lifegiving and uplifting.  It reminds us who we are and what we are about.  I have just finished reading Elie Wiesel's book, Night, in which he recounts in vivid and harrowing detail a journey through the terror camps of the second world war.  He asks why he writes.  'Was it to leave behind a legacy of words, of memories, to help prevent history from repeating itself?' 

It’s only too clear that history does repeat itself.  Srebrenica, Shatila, Rwanda, Syria today.  Remembering gives us the opportunity to hold up the dignity and the sanctity of life and to recommit ourselves to the struggle for justice and for peace.

Lord God, you bless us with the gifts of memory, intellect and reason.  Gift us wisdom in our Remembrance to uphold the dignity and the sanctity of life.  As we remember today those fallen, maimed and affected by the horror and terror of war, help us to recommit ourselves to work humbly and faithfully for reconciliation between peoples and nations, that all may live together in freedom, justice and peace … Amen.