November 9, 2025 – Remembrance Sunday
Photo of George Alexander Harris – Photo courtesy of 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion Association.
https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/memorials/canadian-virtual-war-memorial/detail/2342847
On this Remembrance Sunday, we gather—like generations before us—to hold in solemn memory those who have died in the tragedies of war. We gather not to glorify conflict, but to remember, to mourn, and to renew our commitment to peace. Today we recall countless names etched into memorials across our country and our world. But this morning, we also remember one name especially close to our parish story: the Reverend George Alexander Harris—“Padre Harris”—once a young curate at All Saints, Winnipeg, who gave his life on D-Day so that another might live.
Our Scriptures this morning carry us directly into the heart of Christian remembrance. In the Wisdom of Solomon we hear words spoken to a grieving nation, a people who knew loss intimately: “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.” These words are not sentimental; they arise from the raw experience of exile, suffering, and unjust death. Yet they proclaim a deep truth: that death does not have the final word over the righteous, over those who have walked in courage, compassion, and faithfulness.
And in our Gospel we hear Martha standing before Jesus after the death of her brother Lazarus, her voice trembling with grief: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It is the great cry of every war, every battlefield, every broken family: Lord, why was he taken? Why was she killed? Why must so many die? And into that grief Jesus speaks one of the most audacious promises ever uttered: “I am the resurrection and the life… and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Not a denial of death, but a declaration that death is not ultimate. That love is stronger. That God’s mercy holds even those whose lives were torn by violence.
Those words take on particular depth when we remember the story of Padre Harris.
A photo of The Rev. George Harris, hanging in the All Saints sacristy, shows him in his parachute gear.
He served here at All Saints before the war—assisting Canon Askey, preaching, visiting parishioners, learning what it meant to be a pastor in the ordinary rhythms of parish life. When the war called, he first hoped to serve as a chaplain in the Navy. But when he learned the Army had greater need, he wrote to Bishop Wells saying he was willing to serve wherever Christ’s Church most needed him. He was posted to Shilo, Manitoba, and later attached to the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion. His Senior Chaplain called him “one of the most capable and trustworthy chaplains,” a man as brave in preaching as he was in all other ways.
And then came June 6th, 1944.
The Canadians of the 1st Parachute Battalion were among the very first Allied troops to jump into Normandy that night. Their Dakota aircraft shook under enemy flak. Searchlights tore open the darkness. The roar of engines drowned out conversation. The men were crammed together, yet each alone with his own fear.
When the green light flashed above the door, they leapt into the blackness—into the unknown.
Many paratroopers had brutal descents or crashed into buildings and trees. But one descent has been remembered through the generations because of what happened in the darkness between two men whose parachute lines became entangled. One of them was Corporal Tom O’Connell of Hamilton, Ontario. The other was our own Padre George Harris.
As the two men fell, their chutes twisted together “like a thick rope.” O’Connell began to panic. In the terror of freefall, he kicked something metallic, and then from the darkness below came a calm, steady voice: “Take it easy, old man—whatever you do, take it easy.”
They were plummeting to earth through enemy fire, suspended in a deadly snarl of lines. And yet Padre Harris spent those precious seconds not on saving himself, but on comforting, directing, and steadying the other man. His final moments were a living sermon—words of peace spoken into chaos, reassurance breathed into fear.
Hours later, Corporal O’Connell regained consciousness, badly injured with a fractured spine. He was hanging from his chute in a French field. Beside him lay the body of Padre Harris. Padre Harris had cut himself free, so that Tom’s parachute might open in time to save him.
Corporal O’Connell survived because Padre Harris had given his last words, his last attention, perhaps even the final chance of saving himself, to another. In the worst violence of the century, Padre Harris chose the way of Christ: greater love has no one than this, that they lay down their life for their friends.
His grave was later identified by his discs and his Bible. He had been in the Army less than thirteen months. Thirty-four years old. A parish priest from Winnipeg whose witness to Christ did not falter when the guns roared.
When we remember the fallen, we often speak about courage, sacrifice, and duty. But Padre Harris’s story reminds us of something more profound—that Christian remembrance is not only about honouring brave deeds. It is about recognizing how the love of God breaks into the darkest corners of human history through ordinary people who refuse to give up compassion.
In our cemeteries, in the pages of old parish registers, in the memories held by families across this country, are the names of countless others who died in war. Many were terrified. Many felt small. Many longed simply to return home. But whether or not their stories are as dramatic as Padre Harris’s, each life mattered. Each death was felt in homes and churches and communities. Each one was someone’s beloved. And God holds them all.
As Wisdom says, “In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died… but they are at peace.”
And Jesus tells Martha—and us—“Your brother will rise again.”
Grave marker for the Rev. George Harris, at Ranville Cemetery, France.
Inscription:
His brothers, Joseph Edgar and Charles Rudolph were killed in France 16.7.1916 and 27.8.1918
https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/memorials/canadian-virtual-war-memorial/detail/2342847
The Christian hope does not erase the horror of war. It does not pretend the cost was acceptable or the suffering explainable. Instead, it declares that those who have died—whether in battlefields, in bombed cities, or in military hospitals—are received by a God who knows the wounds of the world from the inside. A God who Himself suffered injustice and violence, who Himself was killed by the machinery of empire, and who rose again to proclaim that death is not the final word.
Today, as we honour the memory of Padre Harris and all the fallen, we must also confront what their deaths ask of us. Remembrance is hollow if it does not change the living. Their sacrifice calls us to be people of peace—people who labour for reconciliation, for diplomacy, for justice, for the healing of wounds between nations and neighbours. It calls us to resist the easy drift toward division or hatred in our own communities. It calls us to be chaplains of peace in a world still too ready to reach for violence.
Padre Harris did not choose to die. But in the moment of crisis he chose love over fear, service over self-preservation. He chose to offer his voice, his courage, his presence so that another might live. What might it look like for us, in our daily lives, to embody that same courage? To speak words of calm into storms of fear? To extend compassion when it would be easier to close our hearts? To choose the way of Christ when the world chooses otherwise?
This Remembrance Sunday, may we honour the dead not only by observing silence, but by living lives worthy of their sacrifice. May we be people shaped by the vision of Wisdom—that the souls of the righteous are in God’s hands. And may we hold fast to Christ’s promise to Martha—that resurrection, not death, is God’s final word over creation.
Padre Harris’s voice echoes to us across the years, spoken as he plunged into the dark skies over Normandy: “Take it easy, old man. Whatever you do, take it easy.” In those words we hear not only the courage of a chaplain but the peace of Christ Himself—a peace the world cannot give, but a peace that will one day heal all nations.
May the memory of the fallen be a blessing.
May the God of peace guide our feet.
And may the resurrection hope of Jesus Christ sustain us until the day when war is no more. Amen.
