"THE AUGUSTINIAN" December 2001

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New York on My Mind: A Friend on the Spot
Paul Maloney OSA

On Tuesday 11 September, I was on my way to New York to attend a course in Contemporary Spirituality at Fordham University in The Bronx, a "break" from my usual studies at Villanova University, Philadelphia PA, that make up the American part of my sabbatical. I caught the local train from the 30th Street station in Philadelphia, changed at Trenton, New Jersey, and entered New York via the tunnel leading into the Penn Station, under Maddison Square Garden. I have followed this ritual every Tuesday since arriving in Philadelphia on this leg of my sabbatical.

What happened on that day surpassed fiction as all the horrors of decades of disaster films came true before our disbelieving eyes.

The initial anxiety over how I was going to get to New York gave way to fatalism as all access across the Hudson was closed and the unbelievable sight of both towers imploding in a cloud of dust and rubble drove us into emotional overload. I remember thinking: "Why is so much paper littering the streets?", totally forgetting that offices contain paper as well as people, and that paper blows restlessly in the wind in a way that people don't.

By some complete fluke, I was able to get through to my friends in New York to let them know that I was staying put. The rest of the day became a vigil as we slowly realised the extent of the possible death toll of innocent people; the victims of such fanatical malice.

I was in Washington at the time of President Kennedy's assassination, and now, as then, people began moving instinctively towards churches, chapels and gymnasiums, where services of all kinds were offered throughout the day. Literally thousands of people gathered to pray for the dead and the missing. University students, on this campus and many others, in their bewilderment displayed a level of faith and vulnerability that I can only describe as a very real part of American spirituality which finds expression more readily in a church setting than it perhaps does in Australia.

The other difference between watching these events on CNN in Australia, with all the shock and solidarity that this involves, and walking among the people along the eastern seaboard of America, is that everyone you meet is affected in a personal way with the loss or disappearance of a family member or a friend. The train I travel on will, next week, not be so crowded, and in many of the homes I pass will there be children whose mother or father, or both, did not come home from work on that Tuesday night.

Villanova University prides itself on it law and business schools, and at least 80 of its alumni would have been at their offices at the World Trade Centre when the planes struck. It is that cloud of personal sadness that removes this from the abstract pity that moves us when an earthquake strikes Turkey, or a famine Ethiopia. It is that which makes human this most inhuman of tragedies.

(Reprinted with kind permission Editor 2001 September edition of "Amici")

St Augustine

He who is our very life came down and took our death upon himself. After his death and resurrection he withdrew from our sight so that we might return to our own hearts and find him there.

Confessions Book 4:12

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