God's House at Ground Zero

Last night after a day of remembrances on TV I settled into bed hoping for something different. I found it.

Documentary Shows How WTC Cross Brought Hope After 9/11 Tragedy
By Jeff Schapiro | Christian Post Contributor
The film “The Cross and The Towers” tells the story of the crosses that were found at Ground Zero two days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which have inspired hope in both Christians and nonbelievers alike. Despite an atheist organization's attempts at having one of the crosses banned from the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, the film's executive producer, Scott Perkins, hopes that the lawsuit will open up the door for more people to learn about the cross through his film.

"It was the story of hope in the midst of devastation, and we had heard about the story through one of the first responders," he said in an interview with The Christian Post on Thursday. "It's the story about the cross, and how the cross ministered to many workers and many of the heroes that were involved in the days following 9/11 and the months following 9/11.”
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There were so many stories of people remembering someone they lost that dark day. Average people just doing normal things that morning never expecting they would become a part of the most horrible day in our history. There were others, also just average people, doing their jobs. Jobs that involved a risk to their lives on a daily basis but as this day began for them, none of them expected they would be included among that hundreds of heroes sacrificing their lives for the sake of others.

In the hours, days, weeks, months that followed no one wanted to give up trying to recover their bodies as hope of finding survivors vanished. As firemen and police officers put on hardhats refusing to leave evil did not win that day. Love did.

The Cross is a symbol of love overcoming suffering by the willingness of Christ to sacrifice His life for the sake of others. He overcame evil, hatred, beatings, the whip and the nails hammered into his body. That dark morning Christ called out to God, His Father, that He forgive the people responsible for it. He refused to surrender love no matter what was done to Him. The men and women showing up at Ground Zero refused to surrender love in the face of what evil caused.

They needed something to hang onto to help them through it. Chaplains were there watching over them and then, when they were tried, worn out, losing hope and strength, in a cavern they found the cross and found a reminder of God's love.

9/11 memorials: The story of the cross at Ground Zero

By Sally Jenkins, Published: September 8

NewYork — The shape was oddly identifiable in the blasted wreckage of the World Trade Center, standing upright amid beams bent like fork tines and jagged, pagan-seeming tridents. A grief-exhausted excavator named Frank Silecchia found it on Sept. 13, 2001, two days after the terrorist attacks. A few days later, he spoke to a Franciscan priest named Father Brian Jordan, who was blessing remains at Ground Zero.

“Father, you want to see God’s House?” he asked. “Look over there.”

Workers at the World Trade Center disaster site look up at a large illuminated cross near the rubble of the collapsed buildings at Ground Zero.

Ed Betz / AP

Father Brian peered through the fields of shredded metal. “What am I looking for?” he asked.

Silecchia replied, “Just keep looking, Father, and see what you see.”

“Oh my God,” Father Brian said. “I see it.”

As Father Brian stared, other rescue workers gathered around him. There was a long moment of silence as he beheld what he considered to be a sign. Against seeming insuperable odds, a 17-foot-long crossbeam, weighing at least two tons, was thrust at a vertical angle in the hellish wasteland. Like a cross.

Ever since the two jets had slammed into the twin towers on Sept. 11, leaving 2,753 dead, Father Brian had been asked by countless New Yorkers, “Why did God do this?” He would reply tartly, in his Brooklyn-born accent: “It had nuttin’ to do with God. This was the actions of men who abused their free will.” Now here was God explaining Himself. It was a revelation, proof that “God had not abandoned Ground Zero,” even as the awful excavations continued.

Silecchia said worriedly, “Father, they might put this in some dump heap.”

“Frankie, no,” Father Brian said. “No, they will not.”

Instead, as the 10th anniversary of the attacks nears, the “World Trade Cross” continues to occupy a central if controversial place at Ground Zero. Shortly after its discovery, Father Brian persuaded city officials to allow a crew of volunteer union laborers to lift it out of the wreckage by crane and mount it on a concrete pedestal. They placed it in a quiet part of the site, on Church Street, where on Oct. 3, 2001, Father Brian blessed it with the prayer of St. Bonaventure. “May it ever compass Thee, seek Thee, find Thee, run to Thee . . . ” When he finished, the crane operators sounded their horns, a choral blast.

Each week, Father Brian held services there. He became the chaplain of the hard hats.
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If you want to know where God was when you were suffering, He was right there all the time sending others to find you, help you and remind you that you were never really out of His view. Man has freewill to do as they choose. For as long as someone is willing to set their own lives aside for the sake of others, He is there overcoming evil for as long as love, hope, compassion, mercy and charity rises above whatever evil tries to destroy.

September 12, 2011
‘My life was forever changed’
Police chaplains recall the days after 9/11 attacks at Ground Zero

Mark Millican
markmillican@daltoncitizen.com

— Jim Cox remembers the rain.

And the heat emanating from the smoldering buildings.

And the ashes.

“When I walked into Ground Zero in the drizzling rain I could smell it — the ash,” he recalled of visiting New York City just days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “And we were standing in this stuff. Who knew what we were standing in? Ashes of the buildings, probably human ash and other things. And I stood there and looked at those piles of rubble a couple of stories high or more, and the smoke coming up. And I could feel the heat, even in the rain — and I broke into tears.

“And my life was forever changed.”
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