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Multi-faith service remembers 9/11
By Nissa LaPoint
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Photo by Nissa LaPoint |
Peace, hope, healing and unity.
These words echoed through the cathedral towers at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral after prominent religious leaders sang, chanted and preached together at a multi-faith prayer service commemorating Sept. 11, 2001.
Ten years after the terrorist attacks, the message they shared was centered on God.
“God of understanding, overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy, we seek your light and guidance as we confront such terrible events,” Auxiliary Bishop James D. Conley, apostolic administrator of the Denver Archdiocese, prayed at the service. “Grant that those whose lives were spared may live so that the lives lost may not have been lost in vain.”
Colorado’s most prominent leaders from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths repeated the same message of love to a crowd at St. John’s in Denver as they recalled the terrorist attacks in the United States.
Through the support of the University of Denver and members of its Religious Advisory Council, a coalition of religious leaders organized a series of events open to the public called “9/11 Ten Years After: A Multi-Faith Response.” Twenty religious leaders participated in the evening prayer service said to be a symbol of the leaders’ and religious community’s relationship together.
“Our human future depends on the new relationships between the religious tradition of humanity and especially between the three Abrahamic traditions,” said the Very Rev. Peter Eaton, rector at St. John’s. “We thank God for this opportunity to be together, a symbol of hope for a new human community.”
The service began when the religious leaders processed down the cathedral while a quartet sang a hymn titled, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.”
A representative of each faith led an invocation. Rabbi Stephen Booth-Nadav, founder of a multi-faith dialogue center called Wisdom House Denver, began by asking that everyone choose life.
“Dear God, please help us as we remember and honor those who died and suffered so much. Help us to choose life on this 10th anniversary so that we and our planet may live,” Rabbi Booth-Nadav said.
He concluded his invocation by blowing a shofar, or ram’s horn, traditionally used during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, whose sound is meant to “wake up” the soul and raise prayers to God, he explained.
The crowd and the Rev. Nancy Bowen, district executive of Unitarian Universalists, led a prayer that called for “dialogue in community, mutual enrichment and growing understanding; and for movement to establish and sustain the legitimate rights of persons of every religious conviction.”
The religious leaders shared some of the most fundamental and traditional aspects of their faith by reading or singing a passage of a religious text then teaching about the message.
Ayman Hama, of the Colorado Muslim Society, sang a part of the Quran in Arabic followed by a reading of the Gospel of Matthew 22:34-40 by the Rev. Leon Emerson, of the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance. Rabbi Susan Rheins, an educator at the Women’s Torah Study, then sang Micah 4:1-5, a passage of both the Hebrew and Christian (Old Testament) scriptures.
The pinnacle of the prayer service occurred when leaders of each faith demonstrated and explained traditional washing rituals practiced with water. Then one Christian, Muslim and Jew simultaneously poured the water they used into one bowl.
The symbolism was not lost on those who attended the service.
“To see and hear the water coming together was really powerful,” said Amy Strader, associate pastor at Lakewood United Methodist Church. “I thought the symbolism of the blending of the water was amazing.”
For Marcia Meier, a student at the Iliff School of Theology, the service was a chance to participate in something significant to remember the events of Sept. 11. The most striking part of the service was hearing the different languages and styles of prayer from each faith, she said.
“I just think we’re all children of God,” Meier said about why she appreciated the multi-faith service.
For Catholics and those of all faiths, Bishop Conley said he hopes that they believe in the words Blessed John Paul II said about the Sept. 11 attacks, which was “a terrible affront to human dignity” and that “the ways of violence will never lead to genuine solutions to humanity’s problems.”
The anniversary of Sept. 11, he told the Denver Catholic Register, is a “grim reminder that there is real evil at work in the world, the same kind of evil that crucified Jesus on the cross. We must respond to that evil with deeper faith in God, more intense prayer lives and a renewed commitment to strive for holiness.”
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