IN REMEMBRANCE
September 2002

Across America this past week, in churches, schools, public places, and especially in the media, we have commemorated the events of September 11, 2001. We need this time of remembrance to heal the deep wounds and profound grief that this catastrophe has inflicted upon the national soul as well as the individual lives of those who are both intimately and vicariously affected.

The collective sharing of pain in a national crisis or disaster is as ancient as Israel remembering Zion and the destruction of the Temple, and in that remembering allowing God to create a new order and bring redemption to God's people. The central act of all Christian worship is an act of remembering in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. We remember a death and a resurrection, and there is a healing that comes upon us as we also remember that God is with us, whether it be a cross or a falling tower.

Yad Vashem in Jerusalem is a memorial to the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. It is a painful place to visit as one is forced to confront the magnitude of evil that humans can visit upon one another. And yet it is a necessary place to visit. When Pope John Paul laid a wreath before the eternal flame, he said:

Here, as at Auschwitz and many other places in Europe, we are overcome by the echo of the heart-rending laments of so many. Men, women and children cry out to us from the depths of the horror that they knew. How can we fail to hear their cry? No one can forget or ignore what happened. No one can diminish its scale. We wish to remember. But we wish to remember for a purpose, namely to ensure that never again will evil prevail, as it did for the millions of innocent victims of Nazism.

Every generation has had its bogeyman, its personification of evil. Whether it's Napoleon, the Kaiser, Hitler, or Osama bin Laden, we look for that one entity to represent the evil among us. We create our devils upon which to focus our fears and our wrath, and seek to objectify, and therefore exorcize, that which corrupts the soul. Jesus had said that heaven is within each of us, but so is hell. We have seen what evil is capable of. We need to remember it. We need to be careful who and what we demonize lest we become what we condemn. We also need to remember that a loving God can lead us through the deep waters of life and bring us to a new and better world.

We need to remember September 11, 2001. Having done that, we need to move on, not forgetting the past, but building upon the ashes of our yesterdays to forge a brighter tomorrow. We need this national catharsis. Now let us move ahead to the future to which God is calling us, equipped with what we have learned, steadfast in our resolve, sure in our faith, secure in God's love, and most of all, filled with the forgiveness, mercy and compassion that is the special heritage of our humanity.

Dr. Harry L. Serio