Thoughts & Homilies

Reflections on September 11 - A Year Later
September 11, 2002

Prayer
Today in our nation and throughout much of the world people have gathered to remember and to observe the first anniversary of the horrors that took several thousand lives in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Such a vicious and violent end to so many lives has moved us be together - here in this sacred place - that we might draw comfort and strength from one another and from our faith. Let us open our minds and heart to the Word which we are about to hear, and to the merciful love of God poured out upon us at every Eucharist.

Homily
For nearly ten months after the attack on New York's World Trade Center, workers sifted through the rubble of those once mighty towers.
As a result, they found many personal items belonging to those who died in that horrific act of terror.
The workers are still trying to track down relatives of the victims to return to them the belongings which they have recovered.
These items include such things as driver's licenses, subway passes, and photographs. Some of the most common items among the rubble were cell phones, beepers and over 400 watches, many of them stopped at the exact time the towers fell.
And, in a way, that seems appropriate.

For so many people across the nation,
time stood still on September 11, 2001.

In a poll commissioned some time back by Family Circle magazine, people were asked what they would be willing to give their lives for.
Only 10% said they would be willing to die to defend a religious belief. It's not surprising that the figure is so low - neither is it uplifting. 43% said they would be willing to lay down their lives to save a stranger and 94% would die to save a loved one.
Those are both inspiring numbers.
Very few of us will ever be called on to do either.
A year ago today hundreds of people were challenged to do just that, and they did.
On that fateful day many, many died seeking to save others - people they did not even know.
Hundreds of the office workers in the towers and at the Pentagon, as well as passengers on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania
helped one another to safety or tried to avert another disaster
and died in the process.
Hundreds of firefighters and rescue workers died trying to reach and rescue people from a collapsing building.
Father Michael Judge, the beloved chaplain of New York City's Fire Department, was killed while ministering to workers.
There were thousands of heroic acts, large and small, that never made it into the newspapers.
This is love in its purest and highest form.
This is "agape" in action.
This is the mystery of sacrificial love,
not it the abstract, but in the concrete.

There is no greater love than to lay down your life for another.
-and we have Jesus' word and his life on it.

You see love isn't just the opposite of evil.
Love positively confronts evil.
Evil has no response to love.
Evil is powerless in the face of pure sacrificial love.
In the light of such love evil is suddenly shown to be the weak and pathetic thing that it is.
This kind of love is always redemptive
It brings good out of evil.
It draws love out of the cauldron of hate.
It inspires courage in the face of fear.
It draws us together as a community and makes us strong
when the forces of evil are trying to tear us apart.

Elie Wiesel, Nobel prize winner and concentration camp survivior said of the September 11 attacks:
"The terrorists achieved the opposite of what they wanted. They moved people to transcend themselves and choose that which is noble in man. For in the end, it is always a matter of choice."

We can choose to hate and destroy or to love and heal.
Father George Butler ministered to many of the firefighters and rescue workers that fateful day.
Many of them lined up to receive blessings or absolution and communion before they went into the burning towers.
Many of them knew that they might not be coming back.
Author Peggy Noonan wrote, "
"The firemen knew exactly what they were running into. They knew the odds, and yet they stood in line,
received the sacraments, hoisted their hoses on their backs
and charged ahead."
One physician who narrowly escaped from the World Trade Center told a worker at a New York hospital that he came face to face with a fireman going up into the danger as he was coming down.
The firefighter had a water hose slung over one shoulder,
"and what I saw," said the physician,
"was the image of Christ carrying the cross."

That's it, isn't it?
In the action of these many heroes, we see Christ.

We see the best we can be,
We honor their memory tonight and all who lost their lives
and those they left behind.

We are a people who remember, people who pray,
people who serve, people of faith, and above all people of hope.

Let us never forget the lessons of the tragedy.
And let us move forward together, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for justice, peacemakers, the merciful - broken, but strong.

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