Memorial Day (2026)
Memorial Day emerged in the years following the American Civil War as communities struggled to know how they could remember and mourn the dead.
It is recorded that, in Mississippi in 1866, a group of women gathered to decorate the graves of Confederate soldiers who had died at the Battle of Shiloh. While walking through the cemetery, the women noticed a separate, neglected section of the grounds; those were the graves of Union soldiers. Despite the bitter resentment and raw wounds left by the Civil War, the women were deeply moved by the thought of the grieving mothers of those men, knowing their sons were buried far from home and seemingly forgotten by the community.
And, in Charleston, South Carolina, formerly enslaved Black Americans helped organize a memorial procession to honor Union soldiers who had died in a Confederate prison camp and had been buried in neglected graves.
Whatever the precise details of those early observances, Memorial Day did not begin as a celebration of triumph or military power. It began in grief. It began in remembrance. It began with communities trying to honor the dead and make sense of immense human loss.
That matters because remembrance can shape us in very different ways.
Sometimes memory hardens into bitterness, resentment, or the desire for revenge. But sometimes memory can become the beginning of healing. And, sometimes grief can soften a heart enough to make peace possible.
And that is why the words of the prophet Isaiah speak so powerfully to us today: “The work of justice will be peace; the effect of justice, calm and security forever.”
Isaiah reminds us that peace is not simply the absence of conflict. Peace must be built, and it can only grow where human dignity is honored, where reconciliation is sought, and where people refuse to allow hatred or violence to have the final word.
And that work is never easy.
Every war leaves wounds behind.
Some are visible.
Others remain hidden in memory, grief, injury, trauma, or absence.
Some families carry the weight of loss for the rest of their lives. There are veterans whose lives were permanently shaped by what they witnessed or endured. There are communities marked by division, violence, and fear.
But it is also into those realities that Jesus speaks: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”
There is something deeply human in those words.
Jesus recognizes that people become tired. Tired from grief. Tired from violence. Tired from carrying memories and losses that do not easily disappear.
And his invitation is not one of escape. He is inviting us to find rest, compassion, and peace in him.
In his message for the 2026 World Day of Peace, Pope Leo XIV described peace as “unarmed and disarming” and reminded the world that peace is not weakness, but a courageous and difficult work of love and justice. And I think his words can offer us an important lesson on this Memorial Day.
Not simply that sacrifice should be honored—though it should be.
But that the memory of suffering and loss should deepen our commitment to building a more just and peaceful world.
Because remembrance is not only about honoring the past. It is also about allowing the memory of suffering and loss to shape the kind of future we hope to build.
If we truly remember the cost of war, then we should also desire a world in which future generations do not have to carry those same wounds of division, loss, and grief.
Those women who decorated the graves of enemy soldiers…
Those formerly enslaved men and women who honored the forgotten dead…
They bore witness to something profoundly human and profoundly Christian:
that peace begins when we refuse to let another person’s humanity disappear.
That’s what we’re being called to now. To become people who build peace in ordinary ways:
through mercy,
through justice,
and through the difficult work of reconciliation.
Remember those words from the Prophet Isaiah: “the work of justice will be peace.”
Homily prepared for Old St. Mary’s Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
