This Friday marks twenty-five years since September 11, 2001.

Recently, I had the privilege of standing before many retired and active FDNY and NYPD officers, along with hundreds of supporters, to offer an invocation and blessing over the last massive steel beam recovered from the South Tower of the World Trade Center, now being carried across our country by the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. As I stood before that scarred and twisted steel, I was struck by something deeper: this is more than a piece of a building. In a very real sense, it is a relic of lives killed that morning.

That beam came from New York, but it calls us to remember all 2,977 lives taken on 9/11, at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and aboard Flight 93, which came down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. They went to work, boarded airplanes, reported for duty, kissed loved ones goodbye, and unknowingly entered eternity.

And amid that horror, others ran toward them.

Firefighters climbed the stairs. Police officers entered the Towers. Port Authority officers, EMS personnel, military personnel, chaplains, and ordinary people refused to abandon one another.

Among them was Rick Rescorla, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran and former Army officer who became director of security for Morgan Stanley at the World Trade Center. On 9/11, he helped lead nearly 2,700 people from the South Tower to safety. Then he went back inside to search for others.

He never came out.

Against this memory, I am drawn especially to Christ’s promise at the conclusion of today’s Gospel: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

Brothers, that is profoundly diaconal. We are ordained not to remain at a safe distance from suffering, but to make Christ the Servant present in its midst.

We go toward a brother deacon who has grown quiet or is carrying something alone. We go toward the faithful entrusted to us in our parishes and ministries: the grieving, the lonely, the struggling family, the poor, the forgotten, and those searching for Christ. We enter hospital rooms, funeral homes, jails, homes, and all those places where people wonder whether God has forgotten them.

Christ the Servant sends us toward His people.

Twenty-five years later, perhaps one lesson still written into that scarred steel is that love moves toward suffering.

So, this week, let us ask:
Lord, who are You asking me to go toward today?

And remember His promise:
“There am I in the midst of them.”

Have a blessed Labor Day.

Jacket Cover: We Were Soldiers Once...and Young,
featuring Captain Rick Rescorla

In Christ the Servant + Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
Receive + Believe + Teach + Practice