The Duty that Remains

Every time we repeat the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God the Father to give us a day of His own choosing, a day that is His own Plan.

We pray: “Give us this day, our daily Bread.” We ask: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

This means that we approach time and the day, every moment, with an attitude of meekness and child-like humility. He leads us by hand, and we follow. We do not understand everything we see, but we trust Him to lead us through.

Today we think about what happened ten years ago. We are alike: each of us remembers that clear day, a bright blue sky. The last moment, seemingly, of innocence as a nation, right before the first jetliner struck the tower.

We remember the newscasters, choked by the same speechless grief grappled every soul that waited on television all that day, and for a week of that single, horribly long hour when the towers burned and fell.

And when the Pentagon, our nation’s chief castle, was engulfed in flame.

And when my tiny Somerset County, a pay-no-mind countryside that never got in the Pittsburgh news much less the world, became an instant shrine to heroes.

We remember that day.

The question remains: what do we do with it?

God continues to give us that day -- the original 9/11 -- as a question and a challenge. With every replay of the tape, with every memory, He asks, “What will you do with this Day?”

There are duties that remain, duties that call us in honor and piety to fulfill.

The fallen must never be overlooked. There are memorials that need to be attended. They who have fallen asleep must be prayed for. Services must be rendered. Their families and children must be tended. Those heroes who ran into the towers, and later served under arms, must be honored, and their wounds must be healed.

Every single man and woman who served in Afghanistan and Iraq came home from the war and left the sands of the desert behind … but as every single veteran of any war will tell you, they will never stop fighting that war in their dreams. Ever.

Every single soldier deserves a national obligation that should never end. 9/11 has its many martyrs: officer workers, policemen, firemen, and soldiers who marched off for the cause of justice, for the “deliverance from evil.”

I say “must” here a lot, because it is a word that is tied to “duty.” These services that must be rendered are not primarily stated for the benefit of our feelings or our needs as a nation. Those concerns are secondary.

But these duties that remain are primarily for what is right, what is good and what is true. 

And the most important duty is this: there is a country to be prayed for, and a God-given country to be served. There is a humble Christian faith that this country needs as a healing balm. There is an Orthodox servanthood that needs expressed for a grieving nation, who has -- and never will -- never gotten “over” 9/11. There is the Trinitarian, Apostolic Faith that alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life … for a sad country that had never confronted Death and Evil the way it did, that horrific Day, ten long years ago.

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

You are the answer to that prayer.

America is tempted by many different voices, but God speaks to this beautiful country through His “salt and light,” through the Body of His Son, through His ambassadors and representatives -- and those, obviously, are the likes of you and me.

You are the answer that God gives.

America is afflicted by evil. This land has been wounded, sorely, by the contempt and rampage of a murderous rage. 

God calls this nation through His Church, His people who live shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone else who remembers -- and He calls them all to His sweet, beautiful salvation.

You are the answer.

The fire department chaplain, a Roman Catholic priest, died in the burning towers, doing his duty. A red-bandanna’d young man led one group after another of lost officer-workers out of the burning rubble, but went back one too many times: he was doing his duty. Firemen and policemen ran into the inferno without hesitation doing their duty. Every soldier saluted, said “yes sir,” and did his duty.

You and I are the answer, in Jesus Christ, to this grieving nation.

That is the duty that remains.

Comments

[Eric John]

Dear Fr. Jonathan:

Off topic - but you invite readers to e-mail you to a linked e-mail address above. Do you read this e-mail and respond when you choose to?

If so, and if you did receive an e-mail on April 14, might I request even an ever so brief reply?

[Reid]

The second half of Romans 1 contains a famous litany of the depravities men indulge in when they abandon the worship and knowledge of God. St. John Chrysostom sees the passage as the Apostle Paul’s explanation and exaltation of God’s merciful wrath: When people abandon the knowledge of God, refusing all correction, the Lord resorts to the sole, terrible mercy remaining. He gives people over to their own desires, allowing them to do what they want. This is a mercy, for He intends thereby to lead them to repentance, letting them see that apart from Him they treat themselves more terribly than they would tolerate from their fiercest enemies.

With this context, I note that if 9/11 was an average day in America, ten to twenty percent more innocent victims died from abortion than died in the terrorists' vile attacks. That terrible day was not an anomaly. It was, rather, the day when our enemies’ violence became a mirror reflecting the wicked carnage and mind-numbing madness our nation has chosen as a way of life. Every day, underneath our bright veneer of civilization, justice, and prosperity, we drown in the chaos of a new 9/11 with ourselves as both perpetrators and victims, for it is our own precious children who die. I fear the veneer blinds many of us to the sheer desperation of our position, a desperation that ought to be driving us to Christ and His Church.