A Duty to Remember

      I find it an irony that the emergency distress call in our nation is 911 ... and that one of the most distressing events of our time took place on September 11th, 2001 - 9/11.

      It has become common among those who have lived through historic events to ask: "Where were you?"  In my memory it began with November 22nd and Kennedy's assassination and includes other tragic deaths like MLK and RJK, the Challenger disaster, Pope John Paul II's shooting and so on, including the morning of 9/11.

     It was in the midst of our Fall Priests' Retreat at the present Christ Our Shepherd Center.  We had finished breakfast and morning prayer when word came of a tragedy in New York City involving the World Trade Center.  I believe we cancelled the morning conference and gathered as everyone else was doing around a tv.  Our retreat master was retired Archbishop Quinn of San Francisco.  We were mesmerized, shocked, brought to tears and horrified at the turn of events as the realization dawned that this was terrorism involving both Towers, the Pentagon and then Shanksville.

     We had a Mass scheduled for later that morning and even though most of the tenants who leased space at the Center closed up shop, those that remained - those on retreat, the staff, and others who were still on campus gathered to pray for those involved and for the nation.  Many tears were shed, much fear was found in our hearts, and our concerns in the midst of the unknown grew more intense.   Our Center, which is a regional training center for the Pennsylvania State Police, suddenly saw a rapid exit of multiple police cars, going we knew not where.  Later we would learn of flight 93 in Shanksville, which is not that far from where we were in Greensburg.

     That afternoon I went back to the parish to see how everyone was and to see what was being planned locally in response.  The trip home was unusually quiet, with little traffic.  People were home ... people were scarred ... I trust that people were praying.

     What a day ... a day I will long remember.  Watching those building come down still brings me to tears ... and remembering those who lost their lives in the attacks, the first responders who gave their lives, and the historic response of the nation, is a duty that I hold sacred and I hope everyone will as well.  But we are, 19 years out, in a new generation.  Kids in college today probably don't remember, and those younger probably know little if anything about that days and those that followed.

     We have a duty to remember.  We have an obligation to become stronger.  We have a responsibility to rebuild, not only buildings and monuments, but the moral fabric of our great nation.  The unity and national resolve that followed 9/11 I believe has passed us by.  How sad!  Today our politicians and society at large tell us that our greatness lies in our economy, our political acumen, our might, and the fact that each of us is right/correct/holding the key to future happiness.  And we use that to beat down and demean the opposition and neglect our responsibility to build a better nation, a better world that is rooted in a reliance upon the Almighty and the strength of his teachings ... for we are a nation "under God".

     Let us do our duty and remember with love those touched by the horror of 9/11/2001.