There is no love greater than to lay down one's own life in defence of another, said the Sundre Legion Branch 223's comrade chaplain during this year's annual Remembrance Day ceremony.
Tim Kirby described such a sacrifice as a “love that gives no matter the cost” as well as a “love that goes beyond that which is good for us.”
Yet that love must also do the best it can for its foe, he told a packed crowd of all ages at the local legion's heavily attended annual service.
Last year, he recollected encouraging everyone to explore his or her imagination — the key to which possibilities are unlocked. Sometimes, fulfilling the possibility of lifting people from oppressive conditions they find themselves in requires a volunteer to be willing to “love with a love that does for the best of others, no matter what it costs us.”
Canada's Armed Forces as well as the men and women who serve in the RCMP represent such volunteers, and the sacrifices they make to ensure our communities' continued and collective well-being at home as well as abroad should be remembered, he said.
Those who return from the battlefield are not always physically scarred. Some veterans struggle with emotional pain. In some cases for the rest of their lives, as was the case with his own father, who was forever haunted following a fateful fight in which a German soldier he'd shot and killed turned out to be a 12-year-old who resembled his own younger brother.
All these years later, many people around the world still endure the rule of repressive regimes. While we enjoy, for example, the freedom of mobility to hop into our cars and go wherever we please, plenty of others live under oppressive governments that require permits to travel distances we would consider trivial, he said.
So this year, Kirby encouraged those who gathered to pay tribute to Canada's soldiers to consider what Canada embodies and represents as well as what we honour about those who have died. Some of those traits, he said, include freedom of religion, freedom of government and freedom of thought.
Concluding his address, the chaplain expressed his gratitude for the large turnout of residents who came to pay their respects to Canada's finest.
“What a privilege it is to be part of this community,” he said.
