Last Updated on September 11, 2022 by Brad
I originally wrote this for our Providence Associates’ weekly e-news. A slightly edited version appeared there on September 8, 2021.
“Sometimes I am disheartened with this country that I feel as if I were carrying on my shoulders the weight of its highest mountains and in my heart all the thorns of its wilderness.”
—Saint Mother Theodore Guerin
Twenty years ago, our nation paused as terror befell our homeland. Much as I’m sure each of us can recall something of our whereabouts and activities of that day, I believe everyone probably took at least a moment to consider their own patriotism – even those who do not claim these United States as their home. The events of that day rocked the whole world in one way or another. In retrospect, it might be said that, momentous and impactful as the day itself was, the aftermath has been equally somber, if not more so. Everything from debates of liberties as new laws and governmental structures came into being to the ultimate sacrifice of many lives in the most violent of circumstances that we still know all too painfully well yet today have been a sampling of the history set in motion that September morning.
In many ways it can be argued that we as a nation have over corrected. War and its ancillaries have been all the youngest in the human family have known in our relations with certain parts of the world. Today, we disagree with our family, friends, and colleagues about border policies, proper modes of caring for the neediest among us, and the rights of “front-line” workers and those in the service industries to have even modest access to the pursuits of life, liberty, and happiness. There’s no shortage of individuals taking a stand for their personal freedoms, more often than not, at the expense of their responsibilities to love their neighbor.
Let us pause to remember the quarter of a million lives lost and countless more wounded and injured beyond measure (including civilians). Let us reflect on these two well-recognized images in the latter days of 2001, and as we do so, ask what messages they may be trying to convey. Are those messages contradictory or complimentary? Are they co-equal or does one rank above the other? As we reconcile these things in our own hearts, let us also take a moment of reflection – much like we did that fateful day – and ask what the state of our nation and world is within us and how our own patriotism can lead away from selfishness and nationalism towards love, mercy, and justice for all.
Let us pray…
Provident God,
acknowledging our complicity
in those attitudes, actions, and words which perpetuate violence,
we beg the grace of a non-violent heart.
Amen.
Prayer adapted from the Sisters of Providence Litany of Nonviolence