Beliefnet
May 11, 2006

Faith at Tribeca
By Michael Kress

"The Saint of 9/11," a documentary about Father Mychal Judge, presents eerily prescient video clips of this New York City fire department chaplain, who died in the terrorist attacks. In one, Father Mychal is seen leading a Fire Department Mass--on Sept. 10, 2001. In his homily, he says that responding to emergency calls is a form of doing God's work: "When you get on a rig, you have no idea what God is calling you to... But he needs you." In a another clip, he wonders what his own last half-hour on Earth will be like, and whether he will spend those waning minutes of life saving others' lives.

That Judge died doing just that--saving others, even after Mayor Giuliani offered him an escape from the carnage--lends the priest something of a prophetic aura, but Father Mychal's saintliness, the film makes clear, doesn't come from anything so mystical as prophecy. It comes from generosity of heart, a true sense of selflessness and service to others. Relying on interviews with friends, colleagues, and people helped by Judge, the film depicts a life truly worthy of that much-overused term, saint.

But the strength of "The Saint of 9/11" is in the humanity--the vulnerability and fallibility--of its portrayal of Mychal Judge. He was a recovering alcoholic who forged a lifelong commitment to AA. He was a gay man in a church that rejected his lifestyle. He could be vain, and loved to have fun. And in the end, these human qualities served to help him better connect with people, to serve them better.

The film presents countless anecdotes about Judge's generosity. Two stand out for me. A friend gives him a much-needed winter coat, but on the way home from his friend's house, Father Mychal sees a homeless man and drapes the coat around him. And as the AIDS crisis raged and patients were treated as pariahs, even by doctors and nurses who wouldn't go near them, Father Mychal strode confidently into the room of one dying man and kissed him on the lips.

"The Saint of 9/11" was inspiring in the truest sense of the word: It made me want to be more like Mychal Judge--which is to say, a better person. At the end of the film, one friend sums up Father Mychal's life with the statement, "He put his own needs second." It's a simple statement that's almost impossible to live up to. What a wonderful epitaph to an incredible human being.