Today for my live Mass, I said:
Today, on this anniversary, we offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for those who died in the attacks of 11 September 2001: those in the towers, at the Pentagon, aboard the aircraft, and those who entered danger to rescue strangers.
In a poem Thomas Merton imagined New York City after some catastrophe:
How are they down, how have they fallen down
Those great strong towers of ice and steel,
And melted by what terror and what miracle?
What fires and lights tore down,
With the white anger of their sudden accusation,
Those towers of silver and of steel?
From Figures For An Apocalypse, VI – In the Ruins of New York (1947) by Thomas Merton”
“How are they down, how have they fallen down / Those great strong towers of ice and steel.”
Holy Mother Church brings us beyond terror, and ruin, and nightmarish memories. She brings us to the altar, where the Sacrifice of Calvary is made present and offered for the dead.
In the anniversary Requiem Mass we pray:
“O God, Lord of mercies, grant to the souls of Thy servants, whose anniversary we commemorate, a place of refreshment, the blessedness of rest, and the brightness of light.”
The years which have passed do not lessen the need of the victims for our prayers, nor our duty of charity toward them.
We therefore entrust the victims, known and unknown, to the Precious Blood of Christ. May whatever remains to be purified be cleansed by His mercy. May the sorrow of their loved ones be changed into rest, darkness into light, and the victim’s violent death into everlasting life.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Amen.
I came to this just having read Egeria (c. AD 384) to her friends for whom she was writing her account of her pilgrimage: “Vos tantum, dominae, lumen meum, memores mei esse dignamini, siue in corpore siue iam extra corpus fuero.” (XXIII.10 in a 1908 German edition – which an English translation of c. 1919 renders “But do you, ladies, light of my eyes, deign to remember me, whether I am in the body or out of the body.”)
Beautifully said.
Is it right and a good thing, too, to pray for the perpetrators?
My brain tells me that it probably wouldn’t do them any good, given that people tend to die as they lived. However, one never knows what in their last instants of life may have happened between their usual ululations. I suppose we might ask God to grant to them what they deserved.
Dear Fr. Z.
Beautifully stated.
Beautifully remembered.
Beautifully Celebrated.
Deo Gratias.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Amen.