Memories and commemorations can be two different things.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and on United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
These remain the deadliest terrorist attacks in human history. Nearly 3,000 people died that day, including about 2,750 in New York. More than 9,000 have since died from the long-term health effects of the attacks, as well.
Certainly, these attacks resulted in a greatly changed awareness of both terrorism prevention and homeland security in general, with a profound “ripple effect” of many other societal, economic, and political changes.
Many of us have memories of the details of that painful date and season.
But perhaps the most poignant moments of awareness arise when we read or hear the remarks of adults whose parents died on that epochal date, and who never knew that parent, and who reflect on him or her, not from personal experience, but only through the memories of others and the memorabilia of the missing.
These children of 9/11 are different from their peers who did not lose a parent, for whom the events of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville now have receded not even into memory but into a history lesson, like Pearl Harbor, the Great Depression, or the Civil War.
For people who lost a loved one on that day, life was different not only socially, politically, and economically, but personally and existentially. Some have commented on the deprivation they grew up with; some have noted how that loss caused them to become stronger.
This anniversary challenges us as people of faith in a particular way.
The sudden and unprovoked death of so many innocent victims raises questions for us about the problem of evil itself: Why do bad things happen to good people? Or more precisely: How can an all-powerful God permit evil to happen?
We can find help in the Catechism of the Catholic Church 309-311, which says that all humans are created with both free will and the moral responsibility not only to do good and avoid evil during our earthly sojourn as individuals, but also to create a better world. On this point, Servant of God Dorothy Day often quoted her mentor, Peter Maurin, who wrote in his Easy Essays: “Let us create a society in which it is easier to be good.”
But then the question arises: What does it mean to “be good”?
Luckily, we have Christ’s own words to the rich young man in Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 19, Verses 19 and 21: “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “Come follow me.”
We cannot undo past evils. We cannot totally grasp God’s ways any more than we can grasp the depths of the seas. Therefore, even if we ourselves have no memory of that epochal tragedy of evil, the best way to commemorate 9/11 is to recall Matthew 19:19 and 21: Follow the example of Jesus, who innocently embraced an unjust fate so we could be born again, and imitate him in humility, trust, and ultimately, in worship.
Go to Mass on Sept. 11, or on any day, to remember those who have died in Christ.
Do this in commemoration of Him — and them.