Love in action

A tribute to Sargent Shriver from Bono. This is where liberals are great, with big-hearted compassion which they put to work to help the poor and needy.

for all the love in him, he knew that love was a tough word. Easy to say, tough to see it through. Love, yes, and peace, too, in no small measure; this was the ’60s but you wouldn’t know it just by looking at him. No long hair in the Shriver house, or rock ’n’ roll. He and his beautiful bride, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, would go to Mass every day — as much an act of rebellion against brutal modernity as it was an act of worship. Love, yes, but love as a brave act, a bold act, requiring toughness and sacrifice.

His faith demanded action, from him, from all of us. For the Word to become flesh, we had to become the eyes, the ears, the hands of a just God. Injustice could, in the words of the old spiritual, “Be Overcome.” Robert Sargent sang, “Make me a channel of your peace,” and became the song.

Make me a channel of your peace:
Where there is hatred let me bring your love.
Where there is injury, your pardon, Lord,
And where there’s doubt, true faith in you.

Oh, Master grant that I may never seek,
So much to be consoled as to console.
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love with all my soul.

Make me a channel of your peace,
Where there’s despair in life, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, only light,
And where there’s sadness, ever joy.

The Peace Corps was Jack Kennedy’s creation but embodied Sargent Shriver’s spirit. Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty but Sarge led the charge. These, and the Special Olympics, were as dramatic an incarnation of the ideas at the heart of America as the space program.