The 9/11 FDNY & Port Authority Police Department Memorial Service

Friday, September 8th at 1:00PM

St. Michael's celebrates life. We refuse to be a warehouse of the past. Every life is a special gift. The memories that connect us all intersect during visits to cemeteries.

Looking around at a time of burial we join in the sorrow of separation from a loved one yet we gain strength from friends and family members who will recall and rejoice a life lived well.

On the fifth anniversary of the attacks of September 11th we will come together differently. We honor those who voluntarily assumed the role of protectors though normally they sustain our blindness. On that day and at that place their acts saved others who live to recall this day and thank God for their sacrifice. These men and women took on an obligation, responsibility, and duty that few of us would accept. They bound collectively recognizing mutual respect and the realities that trust in each other would be the only means that offered a chance to survive.

At the World Trade Center on that awful day the chances for survival must have seemed forfeited. Yet they advanced into eminent peril accepting the duty and loyalty to those they swore to protect and to each other. None of these individuals were foolds and none were cowards. Their need for self-protection and survival were overcome by their commitment to their oaths and their need to rpotect and save those in danger.

As they served us without hesitation we are obligated to remember each one of these proud men and women. We must congregate at sites of memorials dedicating our presence as tribute to them and to their families left with conflicting memories and unfilled dreams of lives ended too soon.

Edward Horn