The Random Thoughts of Henry Holloway
(Published in November 4, when Princess Margaret decided not to marry Peter Townsend).
Princess Margaret has decided not to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend, and she has made this decision of her own free will.
Behind that simple announcement there lies a wonderful spirit of sacrifice. There are those who will grasp their own happiness with both hands, irrespective of what it may mean to others. They are the people who try to get all they can from life without putting too much into it.
Princess Margaret has never been more royal than at this moment when, denying what seemed to be the dictates of her own heart, she has made a sacrifice which has ennobled her and endeared her all the more to the people who have followed her struggle with prayerful interest.
The folk of her own islands and of the whole Commonwealth will pray all the more fervently that she will find a fuller and more complete happiness in the not too distant future.
The red thread of sacrifice runs through all life. Someone spoke the other day of blood on the coal we burn. In some of our evening hymns we pray for those ‘in peril on the sea’. Many of the blessings we enjoy have been bought for us by the sacrifice of others. Oftentimes the way of life is the way of sacrifice.
On Sunday we shall be thinking still more of this idea of sacrifice when we remember the men and women who gave their lives in two world wars so that men might be free. We shall be thinking of them in the mass. But here and there and yonder there will be homes in which it will be a very personal remembrance. The sorrow that touches the world is never fully understood until it touches ourselves. And do remember, will you, not only the countless host in shining array but the thousands who carry the burden of physical pain and distress. They all but gave their lives. They will carry the marks of their sacrifice to the end of the way and neither medal nor pension could pay the debt we owe.
Sacrifice can be vain unless we can learn to use it aright. A girl wrote of her brother who passed on, ‘To live as he did is my debt to him and in paying it I shall find my happiness.’
Two people, a father and mother, have a lovely little rock garden which they tend. It was made by their two sons who were lost within three weeks of each other. Dr. Leslie Church who told the story said, ‘They keep this garden, the father and mother, because of their boys, and sometimes in that quiet place they go to pray. Because of that they make gardens in the lives of other people because they have found the serenity of good courage and the royalty of inward happiness’. A Poet Padre of the First World War left these words behind him, ‘I will love the things for which they died and I will hate, with a bitter lasting hatred, the things that brought them to their death.’
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