Highkixx 9/11 NYC Tribute

During this 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, many have reported on the now iconic picture of the first documented victim at the World Trade Center on 9/11, Father Mychal Judge …

On the September 15, 2001, Fr. Michael Duffy, OFM delivered the homily for the Funeral Mass for Fr. Mychal Judge…

“Mychal Judge’s body was the first one released from Ground Zero. His death certificate has the number one on the top … Why was Mychal Judge number one? … Mychal’s goal and purpose in life at that time was to bring the firemen to the point of death, so they would be ready to meet their maker. There are between two and three hundred firemen buried there [ground zero] … Mychal Judge could not have ministered to them all. It was physically impossible in this life but not in the next … He passed through the other side of life, and now he can continue doing what he wanted to do with all his heart. And the next few weeks, we’re going to have names added, name after name of people, who are being brought out of that rubble. And Mychal Judge is going to be on the other side of death … to greet them instead of sending them there. And he’s going to greet them with that big Irish smile …”

More on Father Judge from NYMagazine, “Back in the early eighties, Judge was one of the first members of the clergy to minister to young gay men with aids, doing their funeral Masses and consoling their partners and family members. He opened the doors of St. Francis of Assisi Church when Dignity, a gay Catholic organization, needed a home for its aids ministry, and he later ran an aids program at St. Francis.”

10 years on from Sept 11– it is comforting to some of us to think that Father Mychal Judge, who had been there for so many in his life, could offer some guidance to so many more on Sept 11, 2001.

Here’s to the survivors, the firefighters and first responders, and to all those we lost that day.

From Broadway, New York, New York!