Remembering September 11 on its 25th Anniversary

Remembering September 11:Father Mychal’s Prayer

Remnants of Twin Towers at Newseum

“Lord, take me where you want me to go;

Let me meet who you want me to meet;

Tell me what you want me to say, and

Keep me out of your way. Amen.”—Fr. Mychal Judge, O. F. M., Chaplain, New York Fire Department, World Trade Center Death Certificate Number 1.

This now-famous prayer by Father Mychal Judge, who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001, is on my mind today as our country observes its moment of silence. We will all pause respectfully as we hear the names of almost 3000 people who died that early autumn morning in four coordinated attacks on this country. Flags will be at half-mast. 

Mychal Judge, a Franciscan friar and Catholic priest who served as a chaplain for the New York City Fire Department, was unafraid to engage with life's messiness. After the first attack, he prayed over bodies in the streets, then entered the lobby of the North Tower, which had become an emergency command post. He was killed by flying debris when the South Tower collapsed. 

His biographers say his dying prayer was, “Jesus, please end this right now! God, please end this!” The iconic photograph of five men carrying his body from the North Tower has been described as an American Pieta, comparing it to another Michael’s statue of Mary holding the dead body of Jesus in St. Peter’s, Rome, or to a lesser-known work by Michelangelo, Deposition with Joseph of Arimathea [with thanks to Barbara Crafton for making this connection].

Father Mychal was also remembered with appreciation for his staunch support of LGBT rights and for his twenty-three years as a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Another 3000 people attended his funeral. Father Michael Duffy closed his homily at that service with, “We come to bury Myke Judge’s body, but not his spirit. We come to bury his hands but not his good works. We come to bury his heart but not his love. Never his love.”

Perhaps all our prayers are being heard, as last week at Saint Mark’s, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Christians gathered for an Interfaith Service titled Love Their Neighbor that was standing room only.

Michael Daly, Daily News (New York), February 11, 2002.

Shannon Stapleton, September 11, 2001, Photojournalist.

Stephen Todd, Daily Ponderables, September 11, 2017.

“Slain Priest: ‘Bury His Heart, But Not His Love.’” September 8, 2011, NPR morning edition.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Listening to Dreams as a Spiritual Practice

 Listening to Dreams as a Spiritual Practice

Guest Writer Bridget Hyde

“What I have continued to find… is that dreams are sources of wisdom for problem-solving and for enhancing life. They put us in touch with dimensions of ourselves that are normally hidden and that we need to develop to reach our full potential.”—George R. Slater in Bringing Dreams to Life (Paulist Press, 1995).

Dreams are a dynamic form of spiritual direction. They come to us in service of wholeness. A visit from a dream brings unconscious information into our awareness. Dreams carry a divine desire to make us whole, to integrate the conscious and unconscious worlds, and to find a balance between soul and persona.

There is much talk in spiritual direction about the “ego” and how it keeps us from God and our most authentic self. My experience has taught me that the ego is not inherently bad. However, an ego out of balance is harmful. 

Don’t we all need egos to meet our basic needs? Our ego drives us to get dressed and go out into the world. My faith tells me that God gave us our egos so we could have the confidence to put forward our gifts and accomplish necessary daily tasks. Unfortunately, some of us fall into situations here on earth that sap our egos’ vitality and self-esteem. For example, during dark or denigrating times, people often dream of kings and queens. In these dreams, the regal, powerful archetype is called forth to balance a personal sense of worth.

When an ego is out of balance the other way, it becomes inflated and sees itself as above others, immune to harm or wrongdoing. If this happens to a person, the unconscious may bring a dream of falling from a high place to land on solid ground. The dream seeks to bring the person “back to earth.” Thus, a person may dream that a plane crashes, yet they land safely. Another example is a dream in which a car stalls and the dreamer must get out and walk. The major thrust of such dreams is to help the dreamer feel grounded and avoid the fate of Icarus.

Bridget Hyde

 Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Constance and Her Companions: The Martyrs of Memphis

Constance and her Companions THE MARTYRS OF MEMPHIS, September 9, 1878

“We give you thanks and praise, O God of compassion, for the heroic witness of Constance and her companions, who, in a time of plague and pestilence, were steadfast in caring for the sick and the dying and loved not their own lives, even unto death. Inspire in us a like love and commitment to those in need, following the example of our Savior Jesus Christ, who, with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, now and forever. Amen.”— “Collect for Constance and her Companions” (Lesser Feasts and Fast) p. 371.

Let’s journey back in time across the Mississippi River to Memphis for a few minutes. It is the summer of 1878, forty years after St. Mary’s Church was founded from Calvary Church and only eight years since St. Mary’s became the Cathedral. It’s the third epidemic of yellow fever, a mosquito-borne hemorrhagic viral infection, to strike our city on the Mississippi River bluff in a decade. Thirty thousand citizens flee in terror. The death toll averages 200 a day. 

The city becomes so depopulated that Memphis loses its charter and will not reorganize for fourteen years. When the epidemic ends, ninety percent of Memphis’s population has contracted yellow fever, and more than 5,000 people have died. Everyone who can afford to do so packs up their bags, leaves the city, and flees away from the river. Later, we will learn that the disease is mosquito-borne and that high, dry conditions are indeed safer.

 At St. Mary’s Cathedral in Memphis, a community of Anglican nuns from New England has lived there for barely five years. They have the opportunity to leave, but they stay despite the high risk of contracting the disease. They remain to nurse the sick and soothe the dying. They are dedicated to prayer, service, and evangelism. We can identify with them and, for today, become one of the sisters. 

Imagine we are now part of the Sisterhood of St. Mary. We arrive in Memphis in 1873 as sisters tasked with establishing a Girls’ School next to St. Mary’s Cathedral. When the epidemic begins, our cathedral dean, George Harris, and Constance, the superior of the Sisters of St. Mary, organize a relief team that includes the sisters, the rectors of Grace Church and Holy Innocents, and three physicians, two of whom are ordained Episcopal priests. 

This team becomes known as the martyrs of Memphis, and we celebrate their lives and ministry today. Unfortunately, most of them, thirty-eight in all, are killed by the fever. Constance, head of the Community of St. Mary, is one of the first to die on September 9, 1878.

A round stone in Elmwood Cemetery marks the joint grave of four martyred sisters and two priests. Each year, the Cathedral holds a virtual pilgrimage to their gravesite to honor their sacrifice to the church and the city.

Whenever we return to this Cathedral of St. Mary’s, we are moved to go up to the beautiful High Altar. It is a memorial to the four Sisters who died. The Cathedral’s High Altar was consecrated on Pentecost in 1879 and bears the inscription “Alleluia Osanna,” Constance’s last words.

  My family and I are indebted to the sisters for their sacrifice. Bishop Gates confirmed my husband and me at the Cathedral in 1968. Dean Dimmick baptized our two sons, Robert and John, there. Indeed, Dean Dimmick, later the bishop of Northern Michigan, modeled the sisters’ ministry by treating his call to prayer, service, and evangelism as a vocation. In 1968, after the death of Martin Luther King, he took the processional cross from St. Mary’s down Poplar Avenue, leading other Memphis clergy to Mayor Loeb’s office to demand rights for sanitation workers. He eventually lost nearly half of his congregation in protest of his actions.

Elizabeth Boggs, transcriber, Project Canterbury, The Sisters of St. Mary at Memphis: with the acts and Suffering of the Priests and Others Who Were There with Them During the Yellow Fever Season of 1878, New York, 1879.

A Great Cloud of Witnesses (Church Publishing 2016).

St. Mary’s Cathedral Website. www.stmarysmemphis.org  

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/