From the Desk of the Pastor |
The following is the text of the homily Father Ryan gave at the Requiem on September 11th, 2002.
From dawn to dusk, and from coast to coast on this most somber of anniversaries a chorus of Requiems has been rolling through the cities of this land, their solemn harmonies washing over great gatherings of people still mourning losses, still seeking healing, still disbelieving that the unbelievable actually happened one year ago, still feeling very, very vulnerable.
Unlike those other Requiems, ours tonight is ritual as well as remembrance: a ritual that draws its power and its meaning from a simple gathering of friends around a supper table some two millennia ago on the night before a Death which forever changed the meaning of death.
And tonight we look to that Death, senseless and violent and cruel, in order to shed light on those other deaths of just one year ago, themselves senseless and violent and cruel. This Requiem, celebrated within the rituals of the Roman Catholic Church, is a remembrance and more than a remembrance. It is a communal reaching out for comfort, and more. It is a prayer for healing in the midst of pain, a prayer for forgiveness in the face of hatred, a prayer for peace in a time of war.
One year ago we came to this place or to another like it because we had been brought to our knees by a tragedy of epic proportions and we knew that we were incapable of sorting it all out by ourselves. We needed to be together; we needed the comfort of our faith, the rituals of our religion; and we needed to cry out to God in our pain echoing the Psalmist: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”
The shock and devastation of the events of September 11, seared as they are into our individual and corporate memories, awakened in us a paralyzing feeling of vulnerability that went far beyond any we had ever known. We had thought we were in charge of our lives, waking each morning and going off to work to earn our bread and our livelihood, and then, in a moment of horror and disbelief, we watched people like ourselves for whom an innocent morning turned into a freefall to eternity, and it was almost as if we were watching ourselves.
We had thought of ourselves as powerful people. Words like “weakness” and “defenseless” were not really part of our everyday vocabulary. And then in one blinding moment, they became our only vocabulary as we found ourselves grieving, not only our dead, but our lost innocence, our lost security, our lost hope.
In the midst of all that wrenching turmoil we came to this place or to another like it and we found not just safety in numbers, not just an anesthetic for our pain, not even just the courage to go on. I think we also found our souls. At least for a moment we found our souls. We found, or found again, the kind of faith and hope and love without which our souls are dead. We found them by looking beyond ourselves; we found them by looking to others and to their needs; we found them by looking to Jesus Christ whose death and resurrection are alone capable of turning tragedy to triumph.
I believe that the feelings of vulnerability we came to know on this day one year ago were not all bad. They became for us a kind of baptism into a reality that most of us had heretofore been spared, a reality that much of our world faces every day. I’m speaking of the vulnerability that is felt this very moment in the settlements of the West Bank and in the streets of Jerusalem; in the refugee camps of Afghanistan and Pakistan; the vulnerability felt each day by the starving, innocent children of Iraq — the vulnerability that comes from abject poverty and random violence in a world that knows too much of both. In a moment we became vulnerable with all of those people and, bad as it was, it was not all bad.
For one thing, that vulnerability triggered something good in us: a generosity and a courage that sent firefighters and rescue workers rushing into burning infernos and raised valiant airline passengers to the noblest of heights. It was a generosity and a courage that spoke to the world about what is best in us.
My friends, one year ago we came to this place or to another like it and we found what we needed. Tonight, we listen to music that is wonderfully consoling yet deeply challenging, and we listen also to the Beatitudes of Jesus that are themselves both consoling and challenging. In that simple yet startling litany, so familiar yet so strange, we hear once again the call to a blessedness our world needs so much but resists so mightily: the blessedness of the poor in spirit, the blessedness of those who mourn, the blessedness of the lowly, of the merciful, the blessedness of those who hunger and thirst for justice, the blessedness of the peacemakers.
I feel certain that those who suffered the loss of loved ones on 9/11, along with the loss of hope and the loss of dreams, must still be struggling mightily to experience any measure whatever of blessedness. And so it falls to us to find ways to bring that blessedness to them. There is no better place to start than here — at the table, the Lord’s table, the table of hope and promise, the table of fellowship and reconciliation, the table where bread broken and wine poured out speak for all time of love — vulnerable love assaulted by violence but never overcome by it!
Father Michael G. Ryan
Cathedral Pastor