Christians are now marking Advent, the prayerful and penitential season preparatory for Christmas or Christ’s Mass. As today is the anniversary of the famed, vitally important WWII Battle of the Bulge‘s start, it seems the perfect time to blend history and religion by reflecting on Gen. George Patton’s advice about prayer.
After far too long being held back by his incompetent, bungling, PC “superiors,” Patton and his Third Army were finally let loose at the 1944 Battle of the Bulge. Of all the Allied commanders, certainly only one could pull off victory against the Nazis: George Patton, the man who swore like a sailor and prayed like a parson.
The Allies desperately needed to stop the Nazis from breaking their hold on Bastogne, Belgium. The Nazis created a miles-wide “bulge” in the Allied line, and Patton knew that to accomplish what he wished to accomplish, he needed the damp, cloudy, miserable winter weather to clear. In other words, he needed a miracle.
Catholic priest and Third Army head chaplain James O’Neill answered a summons from Patton and found the general wanted a weather prayer. Not having a suitable one on hand, O’Neill wrote one himself. Patton took one look and ordered 250,000 copies printed and distributed to his men.
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O’Neill, a warm admirer of Patton, very clearly remembered that Patton’s discussion didn’t end there. The general was worried that not enough of his men were praying on a regular basis. O’Neill admitted: “I do not believe that much praying is going on.” Men sat around just waiting for something to happen.
Patton’s customary bravado was quite gone. “Chaplain, I am a strong believer in Prayer. There are three ways that men get what they want; by planning, by working, and by Praying,” he stated gravely. “Up to now, in the Third Army, God has been very good to us. We have never retreated; we have suffered no defeats... This is because a lot of people back home are praying for us. We were lucky in Africa, in Sicily, and in Italy. Simply because people prayed. But we have to pray for ourselves, too.” Patton was certain without prayer, his men would “crack up.”
Under Patton’s urging, Fr. O’Neill drafted a letter for the Third Army. “[T]he time is now to intensify our faith in prayer, not alone with ourselves, but with every believing man, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, or Christian in the ranks of the Third United States Army,” the chaplain wrote. “Pray when driving. Pray when fighting. Pray alone. Pray with others. Pray by night and pray by day.” While other Allied commanders panicked at a Nazi strike, Patton skillfully pivoted his army, and under skies that suddenly cleared, the Americans marched toward ultimate victory.
Fr. O’Neill’s advice is as valuable, and Patton’s warning as applicable, to all of us as to the soldiers of WWII. Our world seems ever more full of chaos, violence, terrorism, hatred, perversion, and barbarity. Mass shootings, terror attacks, and wars fill the headlines each week. This past weekend alone was chock-full of heartbreaking murders.
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We are witnessing what happens when the world rejects God. Formerly Christian nations revel in unnatural sins. Muslims who believe in rape, jihad, and slavery overrun Western cities and try to wipe out Christian and Jewish populations in Africa and Asia. Politicians proudly sell their souls for thirty pieces of silver. Religious leaders make deals with the devil. How does it all end?
The 12 Apostles took on the pagan Roman Empire and many other powerful and corrupt kingdoms and empires of their day with no weapon but prayer. How impossible it must have seemed to most people that a dozen Jewish laborers should make any meaningful progress against the evil ideologies and cultures of their day!
But the Apostles knew, as George Patton knew, and as we ought to remember today (Matthew 19:26): “With God, all things are possible.”
