A Sign of Hope in the Ruins

©Waterbury Republican/American
Sunday, September 23, 2001

On Thursday, the Rev. Deacon Anthony Kruge of Three Saints Church in Ansonia was joined by Archpriest Nicholas Timpko and parishioners Nicholas Timpko and Luke Nescott on a visit to the site of the recent terrorist attacks in New York City. The following is his account of that visit.

Our chapel was the ruins at ground zero. We prayed for the dead and consoled the living. We prayed that by some miracle, survivors would be found beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center.
We offered spiritual support and condolences to those who sought it.
And we found inspiration in the most unlikely place.
Upon concluding our prayer service, a New York City fireman I knew only by his first name, Frank, approached our group and said, "Fathers, I want to take you somewhere because I know you will understand."
He wanted to show us his personal Calvary.
This tireless servant, who had been on the job since the second day of the catastrophe, led us through a blown-out entrance, above which he had crudely spray-painted the message, "God's House" in bright yellow. He was a big man, 6-foot-3 or 6-foot-4, and you could tell by his eyes he had been crying.
We continued through several police blockades, rubble and smoldering debris to what was once the main floor and was now part of a basement level of tower two.
The next words he spoke were, "Look, one, two, three," and he pointed at three separate locations amid a mass of twisted steel that had yet been undisturbed by human hands.
At that moment, someone in my group said, "Oh, my God."
We stood there motionless.
Directly in the center of the remains of twisted steel, concrete and glass stood, cross-wise, two steel girders approximately 50 feet high and 30 feet wide. They formed a perfect crucifix.
The firemen theorized the "cross" had fallen from a great height through the tower in order to penetrate the debris and remain propped, unsupported, in an upright position. Draped on the left side of the horizontal bar was what appeared to be a remnant of steel the color and texture of the wing or the body of an aircraft.
Large pieces of concrete lay at the head and footstool of the cross. This unusual finding became even more rousing as the fireman pointed to the left and the right of the central cross, where two other cross-wise steel beams had fallen in like manner, hence completing the image of what he'd previously referred to as Calvary.
The previous evening, Frank told us, television anchorwoman Barbara Walters had come to visit the site of where two of her relatives had perished. Initially, she was angered by the firefighter's reference to "God's House."
How, she said, could God have any role amid such death and destruction? But upon viewing the amazing discovery among the ruins, she wept. Uncontrollably.
On the train ride home that evening, I couldn't help but mention this shocking image we had seen earlier that day was symbolic of the Resurrection - except Christ was not on the cross.
It was then Father Nicholas, a chaplain with the New York Police Department for the past eight years, offered his observation.
"He has risen, with all the victims, from the evil."

(Reprinted with permission.)