From the sermon at Barbara Olson’s funeral: 

A handful of terrorists commandeered four planes, crashing three of them, including Flight 77, into symbolic buildings, killing in the process thousands of real flesh-and-blood people with families. These terrorists gave their lives, and took so the lives of so many others, with no hesitation at all. Have Satan and death won?

What did Americans do when they heard the shocking news and saw the devastation? Did they take to the streets with signs and placards, marching with fists upraised, saying, “Death to terrorists!” No, they did not.

What did they do? They took to the streets–in search of places to give blood. In fact, in some places so many of them that there was a seven-hour wait to give blood. They took to the streets to bring food to those who were rescuing people. They took to the streets to go to church, to hold candlelight vigils, to pray.

…

We are people of life. And no terrorist, no matter how powerful, can take that away.

..

I will always remember–I regret not keeping the picture–a picture that was on the front of the former Washington Star. It was a picture of a state-of-the-art road, I think it was in St. Louis, Missouri. It was made to be able to withstand all the force that could be brought against the road: reinforced concrete, meshed steel, whatever you do to make a road that won’t crack. But a microscopic fissure appeared, and grew larger and larger and larger, until there was a large crack in that impenetrable road. And through all that concrete pushed up one small blade of grass in search of the sun. The power of life.

My fellow blades of grass. I have my own personal opinion. I think scripture scholars would not agree with me, but. . . I believe it was on a balmy, beautiful late April afternoon, after a particularly long, harsh winter, that St. Paul went out and sat on a bank by a stream. He could hear the sound of the frozen stream begin to crack and the water to rush again. He heard the song of the birds once more. He looked up and beheld the trees once thought dead, breaking forth in their greenery. He saw the flowers coming up from the once-frozen earth.

I believe Paul saw all of this, and was so moved that he picked up his stylus and wrote those words which have become the Christian’s battle cry ever since; the words that should be on your hearts and lips as you leave this cathedral today:

“Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting?”