9/11

The emotions of this day ten years ago were dominated by fear. I was 12 years old when suddenly war slipped from the periphery into the forefront of my vision as an individual. I am really too young to remember the First Gulf War and subsequent military actions against Iraq, or NATO intervention in Bosnia or the UN and later US intervention in Somalia. I suppose if I had been aware, I might have seen the pieces slowly falling into place for the events of 9/11/01 to come to fruition, the boiling over of hatred could not have been invisible.

I had an appointment this afternoon to meet with the organist and director of music at the Basilica of OLPH in Mission Hill after the 12:30 Mass. I had gone to Mass earlier in the day and arrived a little early, so I slipped into the back of the church and quietly ascended into the choir loft where I watched the rest of the Mass from above. It seems that every year on this day since 9/11 the Mass has been celebrated for a member of the parish, a former Brookline firefighter, who died while offering assistance to the FDNY on that fateful day. While some of the staff at the church were a bit frustrated that yet again this Mass was being done in his honor and yet again his brother eulogized him with the same stories, what moved me was the number of firefighters in attendance at the Mass. It seems as if, even if some have gotten a little bored, there are still people who every year gather together again to remember this man who died trying to do what he thought was right on a day that everyone felt hopeless and vulnerable.

I think that underscores for me the real 'positive' (if I can use that word) side effect of such a tragic event. Around the pain and the suffering, we as people coalesced and became about something more than ourselves. The events of 9/11/01 proved quite firmly that, while man is prone to failure and violence, out of the ashes of his destructive abilities rises a man who is endowed with a kind of hope and love that can only come from God. Ironically, an action of mankind's hatred and fallibility proved most assuredly its goodness and its unwillingness to let evil prevail.

Yet much is still to be learned about how to be about others and not about self. After the tears had been wiped away, the debris cleaned up, the pieces slowly put back together, our fallibility and weakness came to the surface again, we began to fight and to argue and to question and our hope waned. Our thirst for justice became lost somewhere along the way and became confused with vengeance.

We are weak and the events of 9/11 were both a sign of that weakness but also of our strength. May God still permit us to be strong in faith and hope, may He still permit us to be selfless and about others and in that way our goodness can prevail against our weakness and we may all, finally, find true peace in God who through Christ lifts up our nature.


Pax.