Bishop Faber and I had expected until ten days ago to participate in that brief service of worship just before an address by the president of the United States. All of us had looked forward to the occasion. It was to have been an evening of high significance and symbolic meaning, or at least, I think, two reasons. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first member of the Roman Catholic Church to be elected or to serve as president of the United States. There have been considerable discussion, as we all remember about the so-called religious issue during the campaign of 1960 short, as was John Kennedy, his time in office. It was long enough to make it abundantly clear that those who had feared for any reason a Roman Catholic president had misunderstood both the man and his church. John Kennedy, by his actions as president, demonstrated that he was indeed a good Catholic, but more that his kind of Christianity was a strength rather than a handicap to his serving the whole people of the whole nation under the Constitution and under God. Furthermore, by the leadership of Pope John, the 23rd in a period of less than three years, the Roman Catholic Church and Vatican Council too has begun and an internal revival and a reassessment of its relationships with other Christians. So profound, so surprising, and so welcome to all other Christians of goodwill that the ecumenical movement has come to have a new shape and a new promise. Since we met in San Francisco three years ago, President Kennedy is coming to address this assembly on this night. We have an Assassin's Hand had not prevented. It would have clearly symbolized the beginning of a new era of hope for Christian cooperation in the United States of America. But there was a second reason why the president's plan to be here tonight was significant. During the first 11 months of 1963, the nation began to face with a new seriousness the rightful demands of the Negro community for equality, justice and freedom. President Kennedy was one who first saw that the slow advance toward justice. The excuses we had given for delay and the shape of the new world in which we found ourselves in 1963 demanded an effort to change our racial attitudes and to amend our racial practices. Hardly short of a voluntary revolution. He gave himself with all his personal commitment and political skill to this effort, making it perfectly evident that he believed that this was in fact a moral and a spiritual issue which demanded not only new laws, but more important new attitudes and practices voluntarily to be adopted by the American people. The National Council of Churches was one of the bodies within the Commonwealth, which has during these past months responded most heartily to the opportunity to which the president's leadership had opened. The way is coming here tonight would have symbolized the fact that beyond all Partizan differences and transcending all theological divisions, there was a call to all Christians to act for justice, to act and faith in courage and in love. But instead, we are here in a memorial service. We have a memory and the knowledge of what might have been. I shall not attempt any the odyssey tonight to justify the ways of God to men, to try to explain why the Almighty has permitted this dark cloud of tragedy to come upon us all. Rather, I ask that we pray to God that by a sovereign power, he will now use us all to transform a death into a new life and to transform a monstrous wrong into a great new right. Surely we may pray that this young president's life and death will be used among us, us who profess faith in the Lord Jesus Christ ever to remind us to remember these words of our Lord Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Blessed are their meek for they shall inherit the Earth. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness. Sake for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. You are the salt of the Earth. You are the light of the world. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. Amen.
