Santa Clara University

Contemplatives in Action

Memorial Liturgy

Mission Gardens, Santa Clara University
September 17, 2001

As we come together for this time of worship, let us acknowledge that we are not the same people that we were one week ago. The world has changed and so has this university community.

What have we seen during these past six days? What have we seen behind the frightening images on television of explosions, burning buildings, and billowing clouds of ash and smoke? We have seen the face of evil. At some profound level, we fear that evil, like a deadly vacuum or a black hole in space, can suck into itself all that is alive and beautiful and good. Who can be safe from the terrorists? Where can we hide? The hatred that drove this enormous destruction seems more powerful than anything we can do to resist it.

If we concede to the power of evil, if we succumb to that despair, then we will abandon the faith that God has given us. Faith does not ask us to turn away from the vortex of destruction. Hope does not counsel us to wait in resignation until God works it all out in the afterlife. Faith and hope drive us to seek God in the very suffering and destruction which threatens to overwhelm us. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, gives us a strategy for this search. He calls us to be "contemplatives in action."

Contemplation doesn’t ask us to shut our eyes in order to try and find God. It means looking deeply at these events, paying attention from the bottom of our hearts. Contemplation invites us to look deeply at the faces of those touched by this tragedy, to hear the last words of those phoning from the doomed airliners. Almost everyone said "I love you." Knowing the end was near, they blessed those they would leave behind.

Contemplation asks us to pay close attention to the firefighters and police who went back into the towers to save others. We see people forgetting themselves in order to reassure and rescue others. When we are touched by their courage, we are also touched by grace. There God finds us and we find God.

What else have we seen this past week? Throughout our nation and around the world, people have been drawn together in prayer. They are not escaping reality but turning to the deepest reality to pull us back from the brink, to knit together the communities that terrorists sought to rip apart. Authentic prayer speaks bluntly to God in these times, like the Psalm, "How long, O Lord? Will you forget us forever?" Prayer allows us to grieve and to be angry with those enemies that have pushed us to the brink. Genuine prayer allows us to contemplate evil for what it is, to taste it, to spit it out, and turn to the One who is our hope, comfort and safety and the One who challenges us to love more deeply and compassionately.

In the gospel today, we have a vivid image of how God responds to evil and suffering. When we contemplate the encounter of Jesus with the widow from the small town of Nain, we can see the human face of God. We will be seeing many, too many, funerals in the days ahead. Let us look closely at this one.

The widow was weeping and so was the rest of the funeral procession. She had lost first her husband and now her only son. They had lost a relative and friend. How would she buy food and pay for shelter? Would she be lost in the faceless ranks of the poor and homeless? Even worse, she had also lost his love and presence. He was gone and she felt the void as dearly as those whose sons and daughters and loved ones were snatched away by death at the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, the hillside in Pennsylvania.

Jesus was deeply moved by her grief. With a compassion that moved his heart, he halts the procession of mourners. Then he snatches the son out of the grip of death and gives him back to his mother. The mourners began to rejoice because they saw that "God has visited his people." God was not far off in the Temple or in the skies. God was in Jesus. In his compassion they had seen the human face of God -- of Emmanuel, God is with us.

We too will glimpse God in the funerals and stories of those who suffer. They too will be showing us the human face of God. Compassion begins with God and moves into the world through those who offer support and healing and forgiveness.

Prayer also leads us into solidarity with people from every religion and with those whose faith is known to God alone. Although the terrorists wanted to turn nation against nation and people of one religion against people of another, they did not succeed. In the services of prayer from Berlin to New Delhi, from London to Palestine, we can contemplate the One God working to reconcile us all.

Today, we also heard from another contemplative in action, the ancient prophet Isaiah. As a prophet he did not foresee the future so much as he glimpsed the possibility of life in the midst of death. He looked at a nation arming for war and saw that it could be a nation turning to peace. His vision is crucial for America, as it begins to prepare for armed retaliation.

Isaiah urges us today to turn instruments of death into instruments of life. Swords that would carve up the enemy could be beaten into plowshares to open the earth for the seed. Spears that would slash the enemy can be beaten into pruning hooks that will trim vines to yield more grapes. America’s great resources should not be used simply to destroy but to cultivate justice around the world.

Of course, we must use the means possible to find every terrorist on the face of the earth and end their ability to wage evil on the free world. Of course, we should use every moral means to bring an end to the power of evil and bring terrorists to justice. But a war that brings death to innocent people is not justice. Justice is to be found in the courts of law where truth can be determined.

Let us work toward a world that Isaiah envisions, not that of the terrorists. Let us not use the language of justice to sanitize actions that perpetuate and exacerbates the carnage and suffering we saw last Tuesday. Rage and fury is not what we want. We want what Deora’s parents said that they and she would want: a heaven on earth where people of every language would be at peace with each other.

Here at home and across the world, we cannot pursue justice by actions that make other people scapegoats. Just this past May in these Mission Gardens, I can recall Norm Mineta telling the story of seeing his father cry when the country of his birth, Japan, attacked the country of his citizenship, the United States. The vast majority of Japanese-Americans experienced that same pain. His anguish deepened when his family was uprooted from their home in San Jose and unjustly sent to an interment camp in Wyoming. Like other Japanese-American citizens, Mr. Mineta and his family remained loyal to the United States. Now his son, Norman, is Secretary of Transportation.

In Friday's prayer service at St Paul's Cathedral in London, the Archbishop of Canterbury encouraged us to rise up as a great people and nation. He said, "Another, older, American icon was not submerged. The September morning sun continued to shine on the Statue of Liberty, her torch raised like a beacon, a symbol of all that is best in America."

We know that every great religion has fanatics as well as authentic believers. The suicidal terrorists have no religious legitimacy whatsoever. They are to Islam what Timothy McVeigh was to America: evil, extremist, and distorted.

The real face of Islam is seen in Dr Abdullah Khoui at the Islamic Center in Washington, who said "what took place, no religion at all in the world would accept...We condemn these attacks as human beings, and Islam does not approve of what took place."

We have seen the face of evil these days, but the stronger face is the human face of God. Ordinary people summoning up astonishing courage and generosity, risking and even losing their lives to save others. Let us also see the light of grace in those who support the grieving and help them rebuild their lives. Let us be generous in contributing any way we can to help those who have been shattered by their losses. Weapons of great destruction were used against us, but we will not let weapons have the final word but wisdom and peace, love and hope.

What can be do concretely. We can continue to pray together and support each other to heal and find peace. We should rededicate ourselves to our work - faculty as teaching scholars, student as learners, staff in many ways, student as learners, others in whatever your profession or work is.

Let us strive to ever be better at it than before, and not let the terrorists beat down our hearts and minds. Let us focus our energy and generosity on becoming better citizens of the United States and of the world -- realizing that we are all this together.

Let us move ahead as students, faculty, parents and alumni, staff and friends with our lives and work, confident with St Paul that no trial, distress, persecution, hunger, danger or sword will ever separate us from the love of God poured out in Christ -- and I add that neither will we be separated from people of peace from every race, nation, language and way of life..

As Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and members of all great religions, we know that God visits His people especially in times of suffering. May God bless each of you and all people in this the world with peace.