If we in our turn plan on militarism, vengeance, and retaliation, if we steel our spirits against the suffering which such pursuits always cause to the innocent, in short, if we turn to the tools of death, then whatever hollow triumph we may trumpet, it will have been Death alone which has won. And the terrorists will have accomplished in us an enslavement to the same insatiable god that they had come to worship.
Instead, we can contemplate our losses, and from our deep experience of shared grief reach out to others who have suffered similar horrors - yes sometimes even at our own hands. We can instead defy death by constructing a kingdom of compassion. We need our respective faiths then - Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hindus, Buddhism, all of them - not only to assure us that the victims have escaped that power into some close but other world. We need our Faiths to resist and overcome the false promises, and real dominations of Death here in this world, here among us who have survived. Then that saving power, which we believe has already protected our lost loved ones, will act to save us who remain. Then Life, humbly confident even in the face of the flames of death, will triumph - "on earth as in heaven."
The blessings of Peace and Justice,
G. Simon Harak, S. J.