October 12 | Moments Almanac | Cavell

Welcome to Moments Almanac for October 12th. On this day in 1915, a woman stood before a German firing squad in Brussels, Belgium. She was not a soldier, she never commanded an army, she carried no weapon. Her name was Edith Cavill, and her crime was saving lives. Edith was a British nurse working in Belgium when the First World War engulfed Europe. When German forces occupied Brussels, she refused to abandon her patients or her nurses. There were wounded men everywhere, British soldiers, French soldiers, Belgian soldiers, and German soldiers. But Edith had a rather remarkable philosophy about the wounded. A soldier's uniform might tell you which country he served, but it couldn't tell you whether he deserved compassion, and so she cared for them all. She believed suffering was not a national identity, and mercy should never require passport. But Edith went further. Working with a secret network, she helped more than 200 Allied soldiers escape German-occupied Belgium into the neutral Netherlands. She understood the danger. She knew what could happen if the Germans discovered what she was doing. And eventually they did. On August 5th, 1915, Edith Cavill was arrested. She spent the next ten weeks in prison. At her trial she admitted helping the soldiers escape, and the sentence was death, and despite international appeals for mercy, the sentence would stand. On the evening of october eleventh, Edith received word that she would be executed the following morning. She was fifty nine years old, and she had only hours to live. That night, an Anglican chaplain named Starling Gahan was permitted to visit her in her prison cell. He came to comfort her, but what he discovered was a woman whose faith had carried her into an extraordinary place of peace. Edith had spent her life around death. She had seen wounded soldiers breathe their last. She had held the hands of the suffering, and now facing her own death, she told the chaplain she was not afraid. They shared holy communion, they talked about eternity, and then Edith spoke words that would outlive the war itself. Patriotism is not enough. Think about that. Here was a woman about to be executed by an occupying army, a woman whose country was at war, a woman who had every human reason to hate those responsible for her death. But she carried something extraordinary. It is not enough to love one's own people. One must love all men and hate none. And there it was, not a political argument, not a military strategy, a Christian conviction. The words of Jesus spoken on a mountainside centuries earlier had found their way into a prison cell in Brussels. Love your enemies. And Edith Cavill was determined to do precisely that. Near the end of their visit, Reverend Gahan began reciting a familiar hymn, Abide with me, fast falls the even tide. And Edith quietly joined him. Imagine that moment, a prison cell, an old hymn, a woman who knew she was not going to experience another sunset, and a prayer asking God to remain near when everything else was slipping away. And when the chaplain finally departed, they exchanged words of hope. We shall meet again. The next morning, October twelfth, nineteen fifteen, Edith Cavill and Belgian architect Philippe Bach were executed by a German firing squad. Her death sparked outrage around the world. Her name became a symbol of courage. Monuments would be erected, books would be written, and generations would remember her sacrifice as we are doing in this episode. But perhaps the greatest monument was not carved in stone. Perhaps it was those few words spoken in a prison cell. Patriotism is not enough. You see, Edith Cavill understood something we still struggle to remember. We can love our country without hating one another. We can stand for what is right without surrendering what is good. We can have deep convictions without having bitter hearts. And we can live in a world divided by borders, flags, and armies without allowing those divisions to determine the boundaries of our compassion. Edith Cavill couldn't stop the war. She couldn't save herself. But she refused to let the war turn her heart into a battlefield. And on that morning, that October morning in 1915, when the world around her seemed consumed by hatred, she left behind a final testimony that love is larger than nationality, that mercy is stronger than bitterness, and that faith even in the valley of the shadow of death can still sing, Abide with me. And that is the question Edith Cavill leaves us today when the world gives us a thousand reasons to hate. Will we have the courage to love? And that's Moments Almanac for October twelfth. I hope you'll join me tomorrow. Until then, take heart. Notice the scattered moments and share the grace.