National Day of Remembrance : 11 September 2002

A detail from a painting by Giovanni Cimabue, in the lower level of the Basilica at Assisi.

The National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi in San Francisco

Homilies from the National Shrine
of Saint Francis of Assisi

NATIONAL DAY OF REMEMBRANCE
11 SEPTEMBER 2002

[Colossians 3:12–15; Matthew 5:1–12]

ON WEDNESDAY EVENINGS here at the Shrine, a number of us have been gathering together to read Dante’s Divine Comedy. Recently, we finished the Inferno and have begun the Purgatorio. We all hope that we will persevere to the end in Paradise.

In Canto XXXIII of the Inferno, almost at the very bottom of Hell, the pilgrim Dante encounters Count Ugolino della Gherardesca in a famous, but troubling scene. Ugolino was regarded as a traitor to his native Pisa. His nemesis, Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini first lures him into returning to the city and then arrests and imprisons him, together with his sons and grandsons. What happens then is one of the more horrific tales of both medieval history and literature. The Count and his male descendants are sealed into a tower and starved to death. But, while the fundamental disposition of his sons and his grandsons orients them toward pity for one another, and then to light and grace, Ugolino himself dies consumed by his hatred for Ruggieri. In Hell, the two of them are together forever, with the Count eternally sating his hatred by gnawing upon the Archbishop’s skull.

Once, several years ago, I visited the death camp at Auschwitz and could not help but be overwhelmed at the physical evidence of the crimes committed there. Of course, I had a fairly detailed awareness of them beforehand, having studied post-Biblical Jewish history and the history of World War II and having read broadly in Holocaust Studies. Even so, information as such cannot really prepare you for the experience itself.

There is a bunker in the complex in which I saw a photograph that stopped me in my tracks. It recorded an episode I’d never heard mentioned, namely, the arrival of nearly seven hundred Conventual Franciscan friars from the community founded by Saint Maximilian Kolbe at Niepokalanów. They had been forced to march from central Poland to Auschwitz and the photographer captured them stretched out along the road for as far as the frame of the picture would allow. They were all wearing the same Franciscan habit that I wear every day.

Almost all of the priests were killed quickly. Most famously Father Kolbe himself died in a starvation bunker, the last of a group of ten others. He survived for so long that the Nazi guards finally injected carbolic acid into his veins to kill him outright. His death, as we know from a variety of sources, came only after he had ministered to all the others in the starvation bunker. Even in the midst of consummate human suffering and evil, he prepared them to meet God. Then, knowing that his death was imminent, he prayed that God would forgive his executors.

Count Ugolino and Saint Maximilian represent very distinct responses to the enormity of human evil. When God the Creator saw the consequences of the rebellion of angels and the fall of man, He might, I suppose, have so ordained the future course of the world that it would develop without the human and spiritual freedom according to which evil is possible. But to remove all possibility for freedom from the fabric of creation is to remove all possibility of love. The History of Salvation suggests that in God’s judgment, love would turn out in the end to be even greater the whole tragic history of man’s inhumanity to man.

Today’s memorial marks a year of mourning, a year of anxiety, and a year of loss. The Family of the Nation and the Family of Humanity have been torn apart, but I cannot help but remember the example of Saint Maximilian, that modern son of Saint Francis of Assisi, who refused to allow himself to be swallowed up in hatred or in fear or in desire for revenge. In the end, our response to evil, if it will bring authentic security and peace, cannot be based in either technology or weaponry, in policies or alliances, in more war and in more violence. Evil can only be overcome by virtue, fear by hope, and hatred by love. Thus, we must, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, put on heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and, over all these things, love (cf. Col. 3:12–15).

+ May the souls of the faithful departed, especially those who perished at the Pentagon, in the Pennsylvania field and at the Twin Towers, through the mercy of God rest forever in peace. Amen.

Friar Francisco Nahoe, OFM Conv.
THE NATIONAL SHRINE OF SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Pax Christi et bonum