The first picture that I recall seeing in print media the morning after the terrorist attacks was of two emergency responders – one a fireman, the other an official from the Office of Emergency Management, both covered in ash – carrying an injured firefighter to safety. Ten years ago the scene made me think of the Pietà by Michelangelo, who had famously sculpted Our Lady sorrowfully holding the body of her Son. The marble masterpiece seemingly transports me back in time to Good Friday, the Crucifixion, and in the arms of Mary at the foot of cross. Thankfully, the emergency responders in the image weren’t ferrying a dead body in their arms. But both images illustrated to me the fragility of human life, which in tragedy is revealed as all the weaker.
Today, I still find that the emergency responder image looks a lot like the Pietà, but for another reason. It pierces my heart to think of all the wives, sons, and daughters who lost their husband and father to terrorism on September 11. It angers me, as a husband and father, knowing that they have to live with an empty seat at the dinner table every night because he chose simply to go to work for them and paid the fatal price. Ten years later, the emergency responder image shows me how people usually react to violations on human life closest to them – sadness followed by an unrelenting urge for retribution. But it also teaches me how we should respond to all such evil attacks – steadfast protection of all human life.
The second picture that I remember seeing after the attacks was of two steel beams, intersected undeniably in the form a cross, embedded in the Twin Tower wreckage. The image shows the cross standing atop one of a series of rubble mounds that contained jagged pieces of concrete, warped girders, and God only knows what else. I felt the cross rather unremarkable at first. Who hasn’t seen a cross before? I kept thinking about one of the areas where all Christians could agree: Jesus died for us on a cross on Good Friday. As a result, I stared at the steel cross image and believed it illustrated a rather commonplace occurrence: a fitting marker to identify the burial site of all the tragically lost.
Ten years later, however, I look at the same image and observe something remarkable. It wasn’t possible without looking at the image alongside the historical moment of Good Friday. Today, this insight still allows me to grieve about the tragedies in New York City, Washington, D.C., and western Pennsylvania as an American, but to do so now with Christian hope.
The tomb which contained the Good Friday corpse was found empty on Easter Sunday because Good had defeated Evil; Life had conquered Death. Ten years later, the “9/11 Cross” points to a resurrection of hope.
