A Priest's Final Answer to God's Call, on September 11

Each September 11, the world pauses to mark the somber anniversary of one of the darkest days in modern history. In 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airplanes, steering two of them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York.

The attacks claimed thousands of innocent lives. Among the dead were first responders who ran toward the danger to save others. One of them was Father Mychal Judge, a Franciscan priest and longtime chaplain to the New York Fire Department.

A Sermon on the Eve of Tragedy

Father Mychal Judge had served as chaplain to the New York Fire Department since 1992. On 10 September 2001, the day before the tragedy, he celebrated Mass to mark the reopening of a fire station. In his final homily, he spoke to the firefighters about the nature of their calling.

He told them that whenever they climbed aboard a fire truck and set out on a call, they could never know what God was asking of them in that moment. Their task, he said, was simply to answer when called.

Less than a day later, his words took on a haunting resonance.

The Final Call

Father Mychal raced out with the firefighters toward the World Trade Center when the alarm sounded on September 11.

At the scene, he moved among the firefighters and victims, offering comfort, praying over them, and anointing the seriously injured with the sacrament of the sick.

He was standing in the lobby of the North Tower when the South Tower collapsed. Debris and the force of the blast tore through the lobby, killing him.

He would later be designated "Victim 0001", not because he was the first to die in the attacks, but because his body was the first to be officially registered by the medical examiner's office.

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A Portrait of Sacrifice

Father Mychal was carried from the wreckage by firefighters and fellow rescue workers who found his body. They brought him to the nearby Catholic Church of St Peter, where he was laid before the altar and covered with a cloth.

The photograph of his rescuers bearing the priest's body became one of the defining images of September 11, a portrait of compassion, courage and sacrifice amid the ruins.

A Legacy of Selfless Service

Father Mychal Judge is remembered still as the priest who stayed at his firefighters' side even as danger closed in around them. His memory endures not only among New York's firefighters but among all who honor the victims and rescuers of September 11.

Another remarkable story is woven into the tragedy. A fragment of the Bible was found amid the rubble of the World Trade Center, fused to a piece of steel. The surviving passage carried words from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you: Do not resist an evildoer. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." (cf. Matt. 5:38–39)

That these words of forgiveness should surface at the site of one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in modern history lent them an extraordinary symbolic weight.

The September 11 attacks claimed nearly 3,000 lives, among them 343 members of the New York Fire Department who died during rescue operations. Father Mychal Judge and the other first responders who perished that day endure as a testament to the selflessness of those who, rather than flee from danger, ran toward it to save others.

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A Message That Outlasted the Ruins

Photographer Joel Meyerowitz, who preserved the fragment of the Bible after finding it at Ground Zero, saw in it a message that reached far beyond the disaster itself. Words written centuries before September 11 took on sudden, startling urgency amid the wreckage.

Even now, 25 years after the attacks, the world remembers both the victims of that day and the men and women who stood on the front lines. The story of Father Mychal Judge carries particular power because of one remarkable coincidence: the night before the attacks, he told his firefighters they could never know what God would ask of them on their next call.

A few hours later, that call came for him too.

This article was originally published on DoKostola.sk.