Before we retire for the evening, as we say our evening prayers, let us offer prayers for the repose of the Christian souls, Catholic and Protestant alike, Innocents all, murdered by the Allied forces in Dresden in February 80 years ago.

Hundreds of thousands of women and children, the old and inform, so many of whom sought shelter in the great churches of the city, were incinerated alive in a firebombing hellstorm. The ungodly war crime would foreshadow the nuns burned alive in the Allied bombing of Monte Cassino and the innumerable faithful Catholics vaporized in Japan by the Atom Bomb, and remind us that though our battle is against principalities and powers, the enemy will not hesitate to attack on every front and with every weapon available.

Let us be as ruthless in our war on the Devil and on our sins as his servants are in dealing with the innocents in the path of their base ambitions. Let us labor as tirelessly for our incorruptible crown as they do for their corruptible crowns.