To me, this 9-11 remembrance just feels different because I am a Catholic. When I had just left the Seventh-day Adventist church and 9-11 occurred, I was thinking, “last day events, the world deserves this for its sins, much more ahead.....”
I didn’t feel a part of anything going on, even when we went and visited the former site of the Twin Towers in NYC. Everything was so distant, so “the world” and as a good Christian, I wasn’t really in “the world.”
Today, things are different. As a Catholic I feel connected with everything. Walking inside the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth, I actually am more at peace and at war. I am safely inside God’s body, yet, as part of God’s body I am expected to be Him for the world. Everything that happens is not distant, it reverberates within God’s body and we weep with those who weep and we laugh with those who laugh. We are to render assistance not as some charitable act of self-righteousness, but because love and unity draws us to it as if the wounds were our own. We are those who died, they were part of us. We, as Christ’s body, ARE those who now suffer and grieve. They are our griefs and our sorrows too.
Catholicism doesn’t allow me to view life from a safe distance. As God’s arms to hold, I am to hold, as God’s heart I must feel, as His eyes I must see, as His ears I must hear. I am called to LIFE, not to comfort. As a Catholic life calls to me, and I must answer.
9-11 Now a sad memory. God be with those who are still suffering with the loss of loved ones. May we reach out as God’s body and comfort them.
