September 15, 2001 
Dear friends, 

We write as your bishops sharing with you in the shock and trauma of events over the past week in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania. The horror of such acts of terror are scarily imaginable. We grieve with those who have suffered the loss of family and friends even as we grieve within ourselves for what we have lost as a people. We have died a very dramatic death as a nation and there is considerable anxiety and concern about our future. 
It is to this new world of grief, death, cynicism and fear that you and I are now being called. We are people whose most profound symbol is a reminder of the depth of human sin. In the cross we see the human potential for evil. In the crucifixion we human beings took God incarnate, pure love in human flesh, and nailed him to a cross. It was the ultimate invitation to despair. 
But we are most profoundly a people of the resurrection. Week after week we gather as a people to break bread together to experience in the most intimate way the truth that when human beings had done their absolute worst God brought life from the most horrific death. The tomb was empty. Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and the ultimate power of evil was broken. It is that hope that must be rekindled within our own souls and then shared with a grieving nation. 
It is out of that hope that we can ask how we can be instruments of healing in our nation. It is out of that hope that we can boldly proclaim in word and deed the redemptive purposes of God. 
The risen Lord had his own scars that Thomas asked to see. As a people we, too, will bear the scars of the past week throughout both our personal and national history. They will both define us in new ways even as they become the means by which we can more deeply touch a suffering world. 
You are in our prayers. We ask for yours. 
                                      Faithfully,

The Rt. Rev. A.C. Marble, Jr.        The Rt. Rev. Duncan M. Gray