Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good afternoon, everyone. It is an immense honor to be together as we mark 25 years since the horrific terror attacks of September 11th. Twenty-five years since the darkest day that our city has ever known. Twenty-five years of grief and sacrifice. Twenty-five years also of heroism and rebuilding.
I want to acknowledge His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros, to acknowledge His Excellency Archbishop Ronald Hicks, Father Andreas Vithoulkas, consul generals of Greece, Cyprus and Romania, U.N. diplomats who are here with us, as well as rabbis, pastors and imams, faith leaders from across the five boroughs who have joined us in solemn commemoration with a commitment to building a future together of peace, of faith and of hope.
I have been asked today, as you've heard, to reflect on memory and resilience: how New York remembers the enormity of the loss we endured, and how we found the strength within to continue onward.
I will begin first with memory. Over these past weeks, as the heaviness of this day has loomed, I, like so many other New Yorkers, have returned to the scenes of that morning 25 years ago. The towers rising against a perfect blue sky, boats in the harbor, and then the violence of the attacks - a sight so jarring, so unnatural, that even 25 years later, it still shocks the body.
And yet what I have been struck by most is not the black smoke pouring into the sky. It is how, in almost every image that captured that morning, wherever you look, there are New Yorkers looking to help New Yorkers.
Some of it is immediately apparent, like the firefighters striding toward the towers carrying hundreds of pounds of gear without even a moment of hesitation. The heroism of first responders, like the New Yorkers who are gathered here alongside me, or the paramedics treating wounded New Yorkers, consoling them gently amidst the chaos.
But it can also be seen in moments playing out just on the edge of the frame. Moments that not even the person filming would think to focus on.
I think of one moment where an older man fell, even though a toxic, terrifying dust cloud was hurtling toward them. A group of New Yorkers stopped running, turned around, placed their arms beneath his, and lifted him up. The dust may have caught them, but when it did, all of them were on their feet, and none of them were alone.
I saw it, too, in the footage of countless boats streaming toward downtown Manhattan after the Coast Guard sounded a call for all available boats. And so they came in every conceivable size, plunging into the unknown, because nothing could get between them and hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers that they needed to help.
Businessmen lifted babies on board, stockbrokers carried an elderly woman and her Seeing Eye dog onto the deck, strangers adjusted each other's life jackets.
Those who attacked our city, they did so because they thought they could break us at the fractures. They thought they could frighten us, they could make us feel alone, they could leave us on our knees.
How wrong they were. How quick we were to stand back up.
When we remember September 11th today, we remember the horrific terror attacks, we remember all those killed, we remember that enormous devastation of that day.
But that is not all we remember. We remember the generosity strangers showed to strangers. Those who never made it home so that others could, the kindness so many summoned from deep within. We remember how many people helped.
That memory can feel distant sometimes, but not here, not at St. Nicholas. Here, memory is never far away. And here, we feel the resilience that defined our city, not as an abstract concept, but as something material, as something tangible, as something as physical as the walls that rise around us and the pews in which we sit.
No other church was destroyed on September 11. No other congregation found themselves so deep within a maelstrom and so deprived of the place of gathering and solace needed to endure it.
And yet this community, like this city, is resilient.
When this building was little more than a crater, filled with rubble, you dug deep - in every conceivable way. You found the strength to rebuild. You found the strength to renew. You found the strength to recover. And you did not do it alone.
I am moved by how many first responders treated this site with solemn reverence, carefully excavating and returning Bibles and candlesticks and treasured items.
Within that resilience lived a deep desire to honor what we had lost by treating one another with dignity, with love, by making faith real.
I think today of the words of Bishop Demetrios, after a reporter asked him whether his faith was shaken in the face of such enormous tragedy. The bishop responded, "Shaken? Don't you see the outpouring of love surrounding us? A tragedy of tragedies, but don't you notice this unbelievable amount of love?"
Love, my friends, is but another word for resilience. And it was love that guided us as we helped one another to our feet, as we rebuilt what had been destroyed, and as we sought to restore our city in the image of all those that we lost, and all those who sacrificed so much.
What an honor it is to be gathered here today as we remember all those we will never forget, as we stand on hallowed ground, as we recognize the heroism of first responders, be they Port Authority, FDNY, NYPD, or any other city or state or federal agency that looked to help the other - and as we gather here, bowing our heads together in a place where great solidarity and great love rose against all odds from the ashes.
Thank you.
