Today is a day of remembering one of the worst days in American life.  On September 11, 2001, more than 3000 people lost their lives in the attack on the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and in the field in Pennsylvania.  It was an act of extreme and unthinkable violence.  The world could not believe that it had happened as we watched on television the horrors and grief of that day and the days to follow.  

Here we are eighteen years later and there is still so much hatred and violence in our world.  I offer to you readers of this post, the prayer that Pope Francis prayed as he visited the Ground Zero Memorial in New York.  It is one of both sorrow and hope.

“This place of death became a place of life, too, a place of saved lives, a hymn to the triumph of life over the prophets of destruction and death, to goodness over evil, to reconciliation and unity over hatred and division.  Peace in our homes, our families, our schools and our communities.  Peace in all those places where war never seems to end.  Peace for those faces which have known nothing but pain.  Peace throughout this world which God has given us as the home of all and a home for all.  Simply PEACE.”