Joy and hope, even in the face of death: enduring power of love is message of both Sept. 11 and Dec. 25 - author explores meaning of Christmas in light of terrorist attacks on United States - Brief Article - Column

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 21, 2001 by Richard McBrien

It has been said many times since the horrific events of Sept. 11 that nothing will ever be the same again. We are living now in a different world in which no one can take anything for granted, least of all a sense of safety for oneself and one's family.

That may indeed be the case, although human experience teaches that memories eventually fade and, in the absence of new tragedies, things gradually return to normal. People will return to their usual flying habits, and some will even complain about the slower process of security checks.

Does the "everything-has-changed" mantra apply to Christmas as well? Probably so, at least for this year. People with at least a minimal sensibility cannot celebrate such a thoroughly family-oriented feast without being mindful of the thousands who died in terror on the planes, in the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and upon an open field in western Pennsylvania.

And they will be mindful as well of the even greater numbers of loved ones left behind: spouses, children, siblings, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, close friends.

Christmas homilies will undoubtedly refer to the events of Sept. 11 and their aftermath, if only to seek some spiritual meaning of an otherwise inexplicable manifestation of evil.

Whether that will also be the case next year, one cannot say. However, the memory of these tragedies will perdure for as long as there are people alive who can recall where they were and what they were doing when the first and then the second jet crashed headlong into those mighty towers of humanity and commerce at the lower end of Manhattan island on that clear, sun-drenched September morning.

But long after those same witnesses have passed from this earth, this mystical feast of Christmas, commemorating the birth of Jesus in that land of perennial turmoil, will continue to be observed and celebrated by Christians everywhere. And its message will still be then, as it is today, one of joy and hope, even in the face of death.

To be sure, every death is a test of Christian faith, but tragedies of the magnitude of Sept. 11 push us well beyond the usual limits of psychic and spiritual endurance. The experience, at once shocking and numbing, has led many to a deeper insight into the agony that Jesus must have suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane and his feelings of confusion and abandonment on the cross.

Indeed, it is at the very core of Christian faith and proclamation that the resurrection follows the crucifixion, and that it is only through death, especially death to self, that we enter eternal life with God.

In order to be raised up, the scriptures remind us, we must first die. But to pass through death, we must first be born to earthly life. Which is why Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter are so closely interlocked, one with another.

The Incarnation is the foundation of the whole redemptive process. If the Word did not first become one with us in the flesh, the early fathers of the church insisted, he could not have saved us. He had to be one of us to plead our cause before God and to bridge the infinite gap between humanity and divinity.

If Christmas means anything at all, it is that we have the capacity even now of becoming one with God because the Word of God became one with us.

The victims of Sept. 11 did not begin their lives with God after death. They continued their lives with God, although in a new mode of communion. Life is changed, not taken away, as the funeral liturgy reminds us. What was carried forward from this world to the next were not their bank accounts, or stock portfolios, or titles to their cars, or mortgages, or their jobs, or anything else of that sort.

The late Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner put it succinctly: "What is permanent in history is the work of concrete love. Love remains as what is actually done by men and women and not merely as a moral distillate that history leaves behind as its exhausted `residue."

The last phone calls that so many of the victims made bore messages of love and concern, not for themselves but for their spouses and children.

Ground zero at the World Trade Center is truly misnamed. It is instead the rubbled monument to the enduring power of love that no tragedy and not even death itself can topple.

That also happens to be the central message of Christmas -- for this year and for every year to follow.

Fr. Richard McBrien teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame.