Reflections on 9/11

Yesterday (Friday, September 10), I was in my office doing data entry for today’s baptisms (the most tedious work imaginable; the data entry, not the baptisms). The doldrums were broken by the sound of a plane. This is not so unusual since we’re probably 2 miles from Newark Airport. It’s that this baby was flying low and moving fast. It was a jet fighter, (I understand that there may have been two) and it made four passes in about a five minute span. I didn’t see it, but Fr. Rich did and we got a call from our secretary’s husband who saw them from his back yard, just a few blocks away. One of our parishioners has connections in the Elizabeth PD so he gave a call. They knew what was up, but they weren’t talking.

The first time the plane passed overhead, the moment I realized that this wasn’t simply a jumbo jet making its approach but was a plane of war on patrol a feeling of dread came over me in a way I haven’t felt for a very long time. On 9/11 all those years ago I felt numb, but in the days and months that followed I felt this creeping sense of disquiet, like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. That subsided by the following spring, but then just after the first anniversary of the attacks I was in Chicago settling in to my new assignment when the terror level was raised to what ever color represents it’s time to put your head between your legs and kiss it goodbye. New York was armed camp, from what we could tell from the cable news stations, so the director, our financial administrator and I sat down to discuss what to do if a dirty bomb went off in the Loop. We concluded that we were close enough to down town that there probably wasn’t much we could do to save ourselves and the men in our community if the worst happened. We made sure we had enough canned food and bottled water and hoped for the best. My feelings those times mirrored what I felt growing up during the Cold War. I didn’t live through the Cuban Missile Crisis or anything like that, but there was an awareness that nuclear war was a real possibility. I certainly didn’t live in constant fear during those years, but there was a sense of the fragileness of life and that the future was far from assured. These were the feelings that came back to me for that brief moment yesterday morning.

In the end it is faith that sustains me in those moments. This is not to say that being a priest or a Christian will save me from hardships or tragedy, but that if I am doing what I am supposed to do right now, I have no need to fear, even if that something is as tedious as plugging names and addresses into a spreadsheet. Life is unpredictable, even without the threat of terrorism and nuclear war. We just have to live now, as if it’s our last day; live to the fullest this life that is a gift from God. We remember today those who died nine years ago. We pray for them and for their families that still struggle with pain and grief. But the greatest memorial we can give them is to remember that life is short and fragile, so we need to live every moment, not in fear, but in love.