ONE NATION UNDER GOD:
THE HISTORY OF PRAYER IN AMERICA

The Presidential Prayer Team is pleased to offer you an ongoing series of exclusive excerpts from One Nation Under God: The History of Prayer in America by James P. Moore, Jr. Slated for publication on November 1, 2005, the book is eagerly anticipated by Christian and secular markets alike. More information on One Nation Under God, including the PBS film and other future projects, can be found at www.1NUG.com.

This week's excerpt is fitting for the anniversary of both the September 11 terror attacks and The Presidential Prayer Team.

SEPTEMBER 11—PART 2

Once the terrorists had hit their targets, the horror only escalated in a thousand different ways. Back in Lower Manhattan, photographers and television cameramen were capturing people, leaping to their deaths from office floors high above rather than being incinerated alive from the flames. Some of the victims jumped together, holding one another's hands as they did so. One could only wonder what was on the minds of over two hundred men and women as they chose to meet their death and how they might have prayed doing so.

Soon the two 110-story towers soon began to collapse under the weight of the melting steel, a testament to how the planes, fueled to capacity, had been converted into such lethal weapons of mass destruction. For blocks in every direction clouds of smoke and debris soon enveloped everything and everyone in their way. People were covered in a white powder, some looking as though they had been wrapped in plaster casts from head to toe.

One of the rescuers called to duty that morning was Father Mychal Judge, a sixty-eight year old Franciscan priest, who by the end of the day would be counted as Number 00001, officially the first identified victim of the New York World Trade Center. A recovering alcoholic, Father Judge had become a strong believer in Alcoholics Anonymous and its reliance on prayer, a program he called "America's greatest contribution to spirituality." Having served as chaplain to the firefighters of Engine Co.1/Ladder Co. 24 for over ten years, he would often remark how he had joined together his two vocations, becoming both a priest and a firefighter.

When he learned of the first plane crashing into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, he jumped into the Fire Department car with firefighter Michael Weinberg at the wheel and Captain Daniel Brethel of Farmingville next to him. As all three men headed for the scene of chaos, little did they know what really had happened or what their fate would be that day.

His long time friend, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, was already on the scene and quickly grabbed his arm. "Father, please pray for us,' Giuliani said almost instinctually. "I always do," said Father Judge with a smile. In his pocket was the prayer that he wrote that he always carried with him, a reminder of his duty as a priest and as a human being.

Lord, take me where You want me to go;
Let me meet who you want me to meet;
Tell me what You want me to say, and
Keep me out of Your way.

Upon entering the rubble of the North Tower, Father Judge came across the body of fireman Daniel Suhr who had just been fatally struck by the body of a woman who had fallen on top of him. The Franciscan priest quickly removed his helmet and took the clerical stole out of his pocket, kissed it, and placed it around his neck to perform the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. Not long after he ministered to the fireman he proceeded to the other tower to see how he could help when he was struck by falling debris, suffering a fatal blow to the head.

It was his own firefighters who found him in the darkness with their flashlights as they searched the rubble. "Oh, my God, it's Father Mike!," one of the men screamed. There was no breathing, no pulse. Grabbing one of the many broken chairs nearby, the firemen made a makeshift carriage. Reuters photographer Shannon Stapleton would capture one of the more stunning moments of that awful day as the fallen priest was carried out on a chair, a sight one of his close friend would later call "a modern day Pieta." As one fellow Franciscan priest later said with profound respect, "As a Catholic priest he died in a way that he could not have scripted more eloquently. What better way could such a person have given up his life in this world for eternal glory in another while praying over the body of his fallen comrade?"

No one could fully surmise whether Father Judge knew that his fellow firemen, Michael Weinberg and Daniel Brethel, who had accompanied him to the sight, had been killed as well. Almost two years after his death, people arrive daily to view his gravesite at the Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Totowa, New Jersey, reciting the very simple prayer that the Franciscan priest had written many years ago.

This excerpt is drawn from One Nation Under God: The History of Prayer in America by James P. Moore, Jr. to be published by Doubleday on November 1, 2005. More information can be found on www.1NUG.com.

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