Today, on the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, I am especially grateful to Joseph Zaccoli, who lost his father on 9/11 and made this beautiful painting commemorating it. And so we pray:
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Some events are so important, you remember everything about them, where you were, what you were doing. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was at home with my babies--Dagny was just four months old, Max a toddler--listening to the radio when it was interrupted by a news story about the Twin Towers in NYC collapsing from commercial planes flying into them. Holy smokes. When I heard that the pentagon had been hit as well, and that another plane had crashed in PA, I wondered if Michael would be safe in Seattle. He was at an aircraft manufacturing convention downtown instead of at the Boeing factory. I was so relieved when he came home. We didn't have a TV but later that evening, I logged on our dial-up computer and saw the horrific pictures--the smoke, the people jumping to their deaths, the firefighters going in to save lives. I didn't know anybody personally who died there, yet over the years I met many people whose lives were changed by this event. Some who survived because they didn't go to work that Tuesday or were running late left the corporate world to pursue a rural life, others left to pursue a religious vocation, and for some, like us, it was the beginning of a conversion.
