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What does the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 mean to you?the whole article at MilCatHerald
I was a newly ordained bishop at the time, and pastor of St. Ignatius Parish, Chicago, so when Sept. 11th hit, it came as a tremendous shock and we looked for some way to be in solidarity with the people with this great loss. The only thing we could really rely on as a community was prayer and the church, so we opened up the doors to the church; people just started flooding in on an ad hoc basis to pray.
Then what we did is plan a special service on that day, but I remember the tone and the mood that everybody had; this was that they’d talk about what happened to the country at that time and it was almost like the loss of our innocence. We were very innocent in our approach to life, in approach to terrorism, and now it kind of struck home.
I didn’t know anyone who died in the tower, but I did know someone who was in the tower when it was hit. He made a couple decisions coming down out of the tower that actually kind of saved his life and the life of others in it. I got a real vivid sense of what this person kind of went through when they were in the tower. At first they didn’t know what had actually happened. They knew an accident had happened. They didn’t know that we were actually under attack at the time ...
Most of my generation and at least one generation after me would kind of point to Sept. 11 as the day that really was a challenge to us in terms of our patriotism, our love for country and our faith. So hopefully what Sept. 11 will remind us all of is the obligation we have to be responsible for the freedoms that we enjoy in this country and the price that we have to pay.
What would be the top three items on your bucket list?
First, I’m going to tell you exactly what I said to Jerry (Topczewski, chief of staff): I don’t own a bucket …
About 13 years ago, I was in the hospital dying. At that time what came to mind is you don’t put off to tomorrow what you can do today, and the other thing is I was honestly looking at the fact that I may not have accomplished everything that I wanted to do in life, but that’s OK, I could celebrate all the wonderful things that I have achieved or accomplished or things that I shared with people.
I could do that, so that was important, but if you’re asking three things I’d like to do type- of-thing: One, I’d like to kind of journey to Greece and do a little of the journeys of St. Paul. That would be fascinating. I’m fascinated by the studies during the year of Paul, just the extensive travels this man did without the modern conveniences of modern transportation, like motorized boats, planes and trains ... Second thing, I do like Marian devotions. There’s something tremendously consoling about both the person of Mary and her role within the church, so I am fascinated by a lot of the shrines. I visited the major Marian Shrine in India, Our Lady of Good Health, and Lourdes, and ….Our Lady of Guadalupe but I haven’t visited Fatima, so Fatima would be on my bucket list ….
The last thing on my bucket list; I’ve thought doing kind of the patriotic thing – to take a couple days just to see Mount Rushmore or maybe the Grand Canyon, some of the natural sites in the United States. That would be something I would like to do. So, if I owned a bucket and therefore had a bucket list, those would be three things that I would kind of like to do.
Very cool to have him sit down for an informal interview like this. I hope they keep up this feature.