Memorial Service on the 25th Anniversary of 9/11/2001

The Weight of Memory

There are dates that mark time, and there are dates that mark us. September 11, 2001, is one of those dates that marks us. It is etched into the collective memory as a nation, and into the private grief of thousands of families. Twenty-five years have passed. A quarter of a century. Children born that day are now adults, some with children of their own. The world has moved on in countless ways… both good and bad. But for those who lost a husband, a wife, a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, a friend or a co-worker on that bright, terrible morning, the wound has not simply healed with time. It has changed shape, perhaps, but it remains.

Today, we gather as the Church has always gathered in the face of death: to commend the dead to God, to comfort the living, and to proclaim the hope that does not disappoint. We gather for this Requiem, a service whose very name means "rest." We pray— "Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord." We ask for the one thing the world cannot give and cannot take away: the peace of God that passes all understanding.

The images of that day are seared into our minds. The blue sky over Manhattan and Arlington and Pennsylvania. The impacts. The smoke. The destruction. The silence that followed. We remember the first responders climbing the stairs of the towers as others came down... searching through the wreckage of the Pentagon. We remember those who prevented a greater tragedy by forcing down a plane. We remember the voices on the phone, saying "I love you." We remember the empty chairs at dinner tables that remain empty still. We remember.

And in the face of such memory, such loss, the Christian faith does not offer easy answers. It does not say, "Do not grieve." It says, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." It does not pretend that death is not real. It stares death in the face and declares that it has been defeated from the inside out, by a God who Himself entered into our suffering, our pain, and our death.

The Reality of Evil and the Mystery of Suffering

The attacks of September 11 were an act of profound evil. An example of the extreme inhumanity that man is capable of towards other men. Evil. There is no other honest word for it. The deliberate targeting of thousands of innocent people, the turning of airplanes into weapons, the murder of men and women simply going to work on a Tuesday morning. This was evil, and we must name it as such.

Scripture does not shy away from the reality of evil. Our Lord Himself warned us that "in the world you will have tribulation," and then added, "but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." The Apostle Paul reminds us that "we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." There is a darkness in this world that is not merely the absence of good, but a positive force that seeks to destroy, to maim, to kill.  We ignore its existence at our own mortal peril.

And yet, even as we name the evil, we confess that God is not absent. He was not absent in the fires. He was not absent in the collapsing of buildings and the grounding of planes. He was not absent in the last whispered prayers. He was there, in the firefighter who carried a stranger down forty flights of stairs. He was there with the police officer, who, coming off of his shift and hearing the news of the attacks, commandeered a taxi cab and went to give his life rendering aid. He was there in the hands that pulled the living from the rubble. He was there in the churches that filled that evening, as a nation fell to its knees. God does not cause evil, but He is present in the midst of it, working His purposes out in ways we cannot always see.

We do not understand why God permits such suffering. Why some die and some are spared. These are some of the great mysteries of the faith, and we must be honest enough to say we do not have any easy answers. But we do have a God who has entered into our suffering. The Cross is not an answer to the problem of evil in the sense of a philosophical solution. It is something far more profound: it is God Himself bearing the weight of evil, absorbing it into His own body, and emerging victorious on the other side. The Cross says, "I know your pain. I have carried it. And I have overcome it."

The Commendation of the Dead: Entrusting Them to God

In the ancient liturgy of the Church, at the moment of death, we pray: “DEPART, O Christian soul, out of this world, In the Name of God the Father Almighty who created thee. In the Name of Jesus Christ who redeemed thee. In the Name of the Holy Ghost who sanctifieth thee. May thy rest be this day in peace, and thy dwellingplace in the Paradise of God."

We commend the dead to God not because we are certain of their worthiness, but because we are certain of His mercy. We do not stand as judges of the souls of others. That is God's prerogative alone. What we do is entrust them to the One who is both just and merciful, the One who "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."

Today, we commend to God the nearly three thousand souls who perished on September 11, 2001. We commend the passengers and crew of the four flights. We commend the workers in the towers and at the Pentagon. We commend the first responders — the firefighters, the police officers, the paramedics, the military — who ran toward the danger when every instinct told them to run away. We commend them all to the mercy of God.

We pray that they may find the rest that was denied them in their final hours. We pray that they may hear the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant." We pray that they may enter into the joy of their Lord. And we pray this not on the basis of our own righteousness, but on the basis of the Cross, where Christ Himself opened the gates of paradise to all who believe.

The Comfort of the Living: The Ministry of Presence

But a Requiem is not only for the dead. It is for the living. It is for those who carry the weight of loss every day. It is for the wives who became widows in an instant. It is for the children who grew up without a parent. It is for the parents who buried their sons and daughters. It is for the friends who still reach for the phone to call someone who will never answer.

To you who grieve, the Church offers not platitudes, but presence. We are here. We stand with you. We weep with those who weep. We do not say, "I know how you feel," because we do not. Each grief is unique, each loss is personal, each wound is its own. But we do say, "You are not alone." The communion of saints is not just a doctrine to be believed; it is a reality to be experienced. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, and today, we are present with one another… here in person… here virtually through the gift of technology… all surrounded in prayer.

The ministry of presence is one of the most powerful gifts the Church can offer. It is the gift of simply being there. It is the gift of listening. It is the gift of not trying to fix what cannot be fixed, but simply sitting in the ashes with those who mourn. At the beginning of the book of Job, Job is mourning the loss of everything dear to him after great calamities. Job's friends come to comfort him and try to offer explanations for his plight. For all their failures, his friends got one thing profoundly right: "So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great."

If you are carrying grief today, whether from September 11, or from any other loss, know that you are welcome here. Know that you are loved. Know that the God who collects our tears in a bottle is here, in this place, ready to meet you in your sorrow.

 

 

The Hope of the Resurrection: Death Is Not the End

And now we come to the heart of the Christian hope. We come to the reason we can gather on this anniversary and not be consumed by despair. We come to the Resurrection.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the church in Thessalonica about those who have died in Christ, says this: "But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus."

This is the hope that sustains us. This is the hope that transforms our grief. We do not sorrow as those who have no hope. We sorrow as those who know that death is not the end. We sorrow as those who believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. We sorrow as those who trust that the God who raised Jesus from the dead will raise us also.

The Resurrection is not a metaphor. It is not a symbol of hope. It is a historical fact, attested by hundreds of eyewitnesses, and it changes everything. It means that the dead are not lost. It means that the separation we feel is temporary. It means that there will be a day when "God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away."

This is the hope we hold out today. Not a vague hope that "they are in a better place," but the specific, concrete hope of the Christian faith: that Christ is risen, that He is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, and that because He lives, we shall live also.

A Call to Remember and to Hope

Twenty-five years. A generation has been born that knows September 11 only as history. But for those of us who lived through it, it is not history. It is memory. It is grief. It is a wound that has shaped us.

Today, we remember. We remember the dead. We honor their lives. We commend them to God. And we recommit ourselves to the hope that does not disappoint: the hope of the Resurrection, the hope of a new heaven and a new earth, the hope of a world where evil and death are no more.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, with whom the souls of the faithful are in joy and felicity: We commend to Thy mercy the souls of Thy servants, departed this life in Thy faith and fear, beseeching Thee to grant them refreshment, light, and peace, in the company of Thy saints; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.