Remembering 9/11

Remembering September 11:

Father Mychal’s Prayer

“Lord, take me where you want me to go;

Let me meet who you want me to meet;

Tell me what you want me to say, and

Keep me out of your way. Amen.”—Fr. Mychal Judge, O. F. M., Chaplain, New York Fire Department, World Trade Center Death Certificate Number 1.

This now-famous prayer of Father Mychal Judge, who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001, is continually on my mind today during our country’s moment of silence. We will all pause respectfully as we hear the names read of the almost 3000 people who died that early autumn morning in four coordinated attacks on this country. Flags will be at half-mast.

Mychal Judge, a Franciscan friar and Catholic priest serving as a chaplain to the New York City Fire Department, was unafraid to become part of the messiness of life. After the first attack, he prayed over bodies in the streets and then went into the lobby of the North Tower, which became an emergency command post. He was killed by flying debris when the South Tower collapsed.

Remnants of twin towers Newseum

His biographers say his dying prayer was, “Jesus, please end this right now! God, please end this!” The iconic photograph of five men carrying his body out of the North Tower has been described as an American Pieta, comparing it to another Michael’s statue of Mary holding the dead body of Jesus in St. Peter’s, Rome, or to a lesser-known work of Michelangelo, Deposition with Joseph of Arimathea [with thanks to Barbara Crafton for making this connection].

Father Mychal was also appreciatively remembered as a staunch supporter of LGBT rights and as a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous for twenty-three years. Another 3000 people attended his funeral. Father Michael Duffy closed his homily at that service with, “We come to bury Myke Judge’s body, but not his spirit. We come to bury his hands but not his good works. We come to bury his heart but not his love. Never his love.”

Perhaps all our prayers are being heard, for tonight at 6 p.m. at Saint Mark’s, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Christians will join for an Interfaith Service called Love Their Neighbor.

Michael Daly, Daily News (New York), February 11, 2002.

Shannon Stapleton, September 11, 2001, Photojournalist.

Stephen Todd, Daily Ponderables, September 11, 2017.

“Slain Priest: ‘Bury His Heart, But Not His Love.’” September 8, 2011, NPR morning edition.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Constance and her Companions THE MARTYRS OF MEMPHIS, September 9, 1878

Constance and her Companions THE MARTYRS OF MEMPHIS, September 9, 1878

“We give you thanks and praise, O God of compassion, for the heroic witness of Constance and her companions, who, in a time of plague and pestilence, were steadfast in their care for the sick and the dying and loved not their own lives, even unto death. Inspire in us a like love and commitment to those in need, following the example of our Savior Jesus Christ; who, with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, now and forever. Amen.”— “Collect for Constance and her Companions” (Lesser Feasts and Fast) p. 371.

constance and her companions all saints chapel Sewanee

Let’s journey back in time across the Mississippi River to Memphis for a few minutes. It is the summer of 1878, forty years after the founding of St. Mary’s Church from Calvary Church, and only eight years since St. Mary’s became the Cathedral. It’s the third epidemic of yellow fever, the mosquito-borne hemorrhagic viral infection, to strike our city on the bluff of the Mississippi River in a decade. Thirty thousand citizens flee in terror. The death toll averages 200 a day.

The city becomes so depopulated that Memphis loses its charter and will not reorganize for fourteen years. When this epidemic is over, ninety percent of Memphis’s population contracted yellow fever, and over 5,000 people died.  Everyone who can afford to do so packs up their bags, leaves the city, and flees away from the river. Later, we will learn that the disease is mosquito-borne and that high and dry conditions are indeed safer.

 At St. Mary’s Cathedral in Memphis is a community of Anglican nuns from New England who have been in Memphis for barely five years. They have the opportunity to leave, but stay despite the high risk of contracting the disease. They remain to nurse the sick and soothe the dying. They are dedicated to prayer, service, and evangelism. We can identify with them and, for today, become one of the sisters.

Imagine that we are now part of the Sisterhood of St. Mary. We come to Memphis in 1873 as one of the sisters to establish a Girls’ School next to St. Mary’s Cathedral. When the epidemic begins, our cathedral dean, George Harris, and Constance, the superior of the Sisters of St. Mary, organize a team for relief work, which includes the sisters, the rectors of Grace Church, and Holy Innocents, and three physicians, two of whom are ordained Episcopal priests. 

This team becomes known as the martyrs of Memphis, and we celebrate their life and ministry today. But, unfortunately, most of them, thirty-eight in all, are themselves killed by the fever. One of the first to die on September 9, 1878, is Constance, head of the Community of St. Mary.

A round stone in Elmwood Cemetery marks where four martyred sisters and two priests are buried in a joint grave. The Cathedral has a virtual pilgrimage to their gravesite every year to honor their sacrifice for the church and the city.

Whenever we return to this Cathedral of St. Mary’s, we are moved to go up to the beautiful High Altar. It is a memorial to the four Sisters who died. The Cathedral’s high altar is consecrated on Pentecost, 1879, and bears the inscription “Alleluia Osanna,” which are Constance’s last words.

  My family and I are indebted to the sisters for their sacrifice. Bishop Gates confirmed my husband and me at the Cathedral in 1968. Dean Dimmick baptized our two sons, Robert and John, there.  Indeed, Dean Dimmick, later bishop of Northern Michigan, modeled the sisters’ ministry by seeing his call to prayer, service, and evangelism as risk-taking when he takes the processional cross from St. Mary’s down Poplar Avenue in 1968 after the death of Martin Luther King, leading other Memphis clergy to Mayor Loeb’s office demanding rights for sanitation workers. He eventually loses nearly half of his congregation in protest of his actions.

Elizabeth Boggs, transcriber, Project Canterbury, The Sisters of St. Mary at Memphis: with the acts and Suffering of the Priests and Others Who Were There with Them During the Yellow Fever Season of 1878, New York, 1879.

A Great Cloud of Witnesses (Church Publishing 2016).

St. Mary’s Cathedral Website. www.stmarysmemphis.org  

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Hospitality of Thoughts as a Spiritual Practice

 Hospitality of Thoughts as a Spiritual Practice

“Hospitality means primarily creating a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not about changing people, but about offering them space where change can occur. It is not to bring men and women over to our side.

The paradox of hospitality is that it seeks to create a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and be free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, and dance their own dances; they are also free to leave and follow their own vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adore the lifestyle of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own.”—Henri Nouwen in You Are the Beloved (Convergent Books 2017).

During the pandemic, I was on a Zoom call with other pediatric radiologists nationwide, honoring a staff member who led our group of physicians for over twenty-nine years, striving to deliver the best care to children undergoing diagnostic imaging. Jennifer was highly competent but also exceptionally unique. Some of the comments I remember were that she was always a glass-three-quarter-full person.

People who see a glass half empty see the world in its scarcity—those who see a glass half full see the world and its abundance. But Jennifer saw the world as overabundant, with more possibilities than one could imagine. Someone mentioned she never saw a bad idea. That meant she listened to every thought given to her and looked at all the possibilities it had to offer. 

I wish I had spent more time with her and learned more from her, even if it was just by osmosis.

We recently studied the Rule of Benedict with a group of people learning about pastoral care. We discussed the Benedictine concept of radical hospitality, where the stranger is always welcomed, regardless of who they are or where they come from. At the celebration of Jennifer Boylan’s work, I realized she was practicing radical hospitality for people’s thoughts and ideas. She welcomed them regardless of who proposed them and sought the truth in each possibility to move forward. More and more, I realize our thoughts are precious to us. They come from the creative and vulnerable part of us that we must treat gently, as she so well did.

 I also asked Jennifer to explain how she learned these skills. She told me she learned this from her father, who died in 2015, whom I had met once when he was in the hospital. His colleagues described him as “a seeker of knowledge, foe of unnecessary complication, purveyor of simplicity. A calm place in a storm. Always willing to talk. Quick with a smile. Respected by his peers.” This well described Jennifer, as she had hoped in her life to emulate her father. She had learned from him an impatience for bureaucracy and a need to minimize the steps between A and B.

I heard Jennifer and her father teach us “experts” that night about staying in relationships and serving others, leading by example. We would describe this person as a servant leader in a religious setting as well as in this medical setting.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/