A day to remember and pray

September 11 will always be remembered with sadness and disbelief, with unbelievable remorse and grief over what happened 15 years ago. Remembering 3000 people who lost their lives on that horrible day, I pray especially today for two former parishioners, Peter Klein and Matthew Grzymalski who died on that day. Leading the funeral was certainly a touching and moving experience. Some parishes on Long Island and New Jersey had as many as 30 funerals lined up over two months and more. As I share with you a photo I took in the 1980s when I visited the Statue of Liberty and had this photo taken of the Twin Towers, I remember a few occasions when I took my parents, family and friends on top of the Twin Towers, obviously in safer days in the 1980s. Then when I visited Ground Zero a few weeks after the tragedy that shook America, I wrote a message in Maltese on a large tarp available to record messages from survivors and friends of the victims.

I wrote a brief message in Maltese seen here on the right hand side "Il-Bambin jiftakar fikom u l-Maltin jitolbu ghalikom." Which means "May God remember you as the Maltese pray for you." Let us all remember the New York martyrs as well as the people who died in Washington DC and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Let us also pray for the many children who lost their parents that day, including many children who never saw their fathers who died that day, including 60 whose dads worked with Cantor Fitzgerald, losing 658 of its 960 New York employees working in the top floors of the Twin Towers.