Doubling the usual midday Mass attendance, nearly 1,000 people gathered at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels Sept. 11 as Cardinal Roger Mahony presided at a noon liturgy commemorating the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the East Coast.

"Here in Los Angeles, we have a special remembrance," said Cardinal Mahony, who noted in his opening remarks that three of the four hijacked planes were originally bound for California with many Southern California passengers. "So we remember all of these people today and we pray for our country, its future, and for peace, freedom and harmony."

In his homily, Cardinal Mahony said the attacks represented a new kind of war against "our system of freedom, personal rights and that sense of liberty to make our own choices." Insights into ways of dealing with the reality of terrorism, said the cardinal, could be found in the day's Scripture reading from St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians.

"Paul is telling the Corinthians to get rid of all of the bad yeast --- that is, the bad habits of people --- because the few bad leaven will affect everyone. Conversely, the good leaven of the small group has the ability to affect the total group as well … We cannot be so filled with fear that we allow the leaven of terror to take hold of us. We have the ability to be the good leaven which helps transform all of us and the whole world," said the cardinal.

"If anything has changed in the last five years," he added, "it is the real sense that we are together as a people." For example, he observed, airline passengers converse more to each other in airports while going through security procedures, whereas before 9/11, "very few people talked to one another."

Cardinal Mahony praised the 9/11 heroes of public servant first responders and ordinary people who helped their fellow citizens. "The Lord calls us to extend ourselves more generously in service to one another, to be that neighbor, one to another," he said.

Noting that he was in Washington, D.C., at a bishops' meeting on Sept. 11, 2001, the cardinal said he remembered looking out his hotel window at the "smoldering Pentagon." The evening, he appeared on CNN following an address by President George W. Bush, who referred several times to the "darkness" of the day's events.

"When it came to be my turn to offer commentary, I used that … I said all of us are looking for some way to bring light and hope into our hearts and into our land," recounted the cardinal, who suggested then that families light a candle together as a sign of hope.

Today, lighting a candle is "a wonderful way to remember that day," said Cardinal Mahony. "God's love and mercy are constantly with us. The burning light of God's love cannot be snuffed out by anyone."