麻豆社

Good morning. One of the most striking images of the World Trade Center attacks is a photograph of firemen carrying the body of a dead priest out of the North Tower. This was Fr Mychal Judge, chaplain to the local fire department. He was the first officially recorded victim of 9-11, victim number 0001.

September 11th was an atrocity broadcast in real time; its immediacy and power never fade. How a person is supposed to make sense of it, I'm not sure. Some crimes are so great, they defy words. One could watch the horror and panic and be fearful; one could consider the wickedness of the criminality and despair. People of faith, like me, also have to confront the motivations behind the attacks, the uncomfortable fact that al-Qaeda acted in the name of its own perverse form of religion.

But Fr Mychal was also motivated by faith. When the planes hit, he changed out of his Franciscan habit and went to the Towers to minister to the wounded and dying. This was typical of the man. A friend recalled that a disturbed resident once took his own family hostage with a gun, and Fr Mychal climbed a ladder to negotiate with him through an open window, suggesting they go and have a cup of coffee, sort the whole thing out.

He owned almost nothing. He gave himself entirely to other people. He was reportedly praying to God to make the dying stop when, at 9.59am, he was struck in the head by flying debris and killed.

The coda to this story means a great deal to me as a Catholic. The firemen took time to carry his body to a church, laid him in front of the altar, knelt and prayed - and then ran back into the blood and dust.

The terrorists killed in the name of their idea of God. Fr Mychal - the emergency services and anyone who tried to help - gave their lives for other people. This distinguishes fanaticism from a philosophy of love, the latter found among good people with faith, including Islam, and those without. Fanaticism is sterile; it destroys, not builds; it places pursuit of purity above the love of imperfect humanity. What it cannot control it kills.

There is an earlier story that at the height of the AIDs crisis, when many would have nothing to do with its sufferers, Fr Mychal would minister to patients by washing them and kissing their foreheads. Love is boundless. It gives itself away till there is nothing left, but peace.

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