Prayer to the Protector of our Homeland

The prayer to the protector of our homeland from my grandfather's prayer book (Men in prayer).

You, O God, are the giver of all good gifts. Every people and every country lives from the blessing of your hands. The well-being of all people and nations and also of our dear homeland lies solely in your fatherly goodness. You give everyone the courage to strive in their profession and status for the benefit of their families and fellow human beings.

You share the talents and gifts. Through your blessing you give unity and brotherhood, uniting us into a strong community. True art and true science, which flourish in our country, come from you. You give prosperity and justice to commerce. You give the craft the rise and prosperity, the artist the diligence and the sense for the beautiful and noble. All our work should praise and honor you.

What we do and create should be done to thank you. Be the patron of our country in every situation! Spread your blessing hands over our homeland, over state and country, over fields and fields, over factories and businesses. Bless our schools and educational institutions, our hospitals and sanatoriums, our roads and passports. Bless the rulers of our country, our cantons and cities, who care for our earthly well-being in your name.

Grant them wisdom and righteousness, prudent legislation, and a Christian spirit, that we may be true to our covenant that we swore by your name. Protect from despair all the poor and needy, all embittered and disappointed, and restore to a decent life the intemperate and pleasure-seekers. Never take your blessings from us, Father in heaven!

We live and work out of him, and with him we attain the eternal homeland that you may prepare for us after these earthly worries.

Amen.

Peace is always in God, for God is peace, and peace may not be destroyed. But discord would be destroyed. Therefore you should see that you focus on peace, protect widows and orphans, as you have done up to now. And whoever happiness increases on earth should thank God for it, so it also increases in heaven. You should also carry God's suffering in your hearts, because it is man's greatest consolation at his last end.

Some people doubt faith and the devil makes some ideas through faith and most of all through faith. But we should not be doubtful about it, for it is where it is set. I write it to you as an admonition that when the evil spirit seeks one, the more gallantly he resists.

(Letter from Holy Brother Klaus to Schultheiss and Council of Bern, 1482)