NEW YORK — The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have had a lasting effect on the lives of Americans — and not all of it is bad.

Computer consultant John Hinrichsen changed his attitude about work. New York attorney Diane Virzera found a deepening of her spiritual life. Franciscan Father Brian Jordan has noticed a warming relationship among the races living in the Big Apple.

And while some cynics saw the religious revival after 9/11 as a temporary thing, five years down the road there’s evidence that the revival has had a lasting impact. Even the political culture in the nation’s capital has changed somewhat.

The fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks will be commemorated with memorial services in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. For Catholics who witnessed the events firsthand, the anniversary brings back difficult memories as well as reflections on how the attacks impacted their spiritual lives and those around them.

When Hinrichsen walked out of the subway in downtown Manhattan that sunny Tuesday morning, the only thing on his mind was that he was late for work. Policemen were blocking access to the subway station underneath the World Trade Center, which Hinrichsen needed to commute to Jersey City, N.J. When he looked up, he saw one of the towers on fire. A passerby said a plane had struck it. Hinrichsen then saw the second tower on fire.

“I knew then that it had been a terrorist attack,” he recalled. “I was in total denial because my next thought was, ‘How am I going to get to work?’”

It wasn’t long after that when he saw the South Tower start to tip over and make a horrible noise. Suddenly it collapsed down on itself.

“I felt the earth shake. Then I remembered the verse in the Bible about two men in a field. One was taken and one was left behind. I realized that thousands of people had just died. It hit me. I understood that this was real. The question of going to work was not the problem,” he said.

Meanwhile, Msgr. Robert O’Connell, chaplain for the New York Port Authority Police, was in the northern New York suburb of Pelham. Recently retired as pastor of St. Peter’s Church, in the shadow of the World Trade Center, he had just settled down to drink his coffee when he heard the news. After watching the second plane hit on TV, he said, “I’m outta here.”

The Port Authority Police was the force that carried out all security at the World Trade Center. Msgr. O’Connell had been on the scene after the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed seven people, including a pregnant woman and her unborn child, and injured hundreds of office workers.

Now, still chaplain for the Port Authority Police, Msgr. O’Connell jumped into his car and sped down the West Side Highway, the stretch of Manhattan road overlooking the Hudson River. It was empty except for police cars. He parked his car near the North Tower and met up with policemen.

“Suddenly, a whole bunch of junk fell down on us. Fortunately, nothing hit hard. There was a lot of black-and-white soot,” Msgr. O’Connell recalled.

Shortly afterwards, the North Tower collapsed.

“If I had arrived five minutes earlier, I would have been with Father Mychal Judge.”

Father Judge was the chaplain of the New York City Fire Department. He perished that morning, apparently when debris fell on him as he was blessing the dead and anointing the sick.

After the North Tower collapsed, Msgr. O’Connell ran north with his group. But they soon returned. A medic gave them oxygen masks. Msgr. O’Connell eventually got back to the scene and began anointing firemen and civilians. He spent a great deal of time consoling people.

“One young cop came up to me and said, ‘I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared.’ I gave him a blessing and absolution,” the priest said. “And then he left. I never saw him again.”

‘Rosary Held Me Together’

A few blocks away, a different scene was taking place in Diane Virzera’s office. Virzera, a lawyer with a financial institution, had arrived by subway. When she stepped into the street, the scene was complete mayhem.

“People were sitting down and crying. Some were being comforted. Sirens were going off. I looked up and saw both towers burning,” Virzera recalled.

Not knowing exactly what had happened, she went into her office. Inside, she and her colleagues crowded around a television to learn the news.

“Then I went to my office and called home. I spoke to my dad to tell him that I was okay. That’s when the first tower went down. I heard an explosion and thought it was a bomb. Black smoke covered my windows. I remember telling my dad, ‘Oh my God, I heard an explosion. I’m going under my desk. I have to go somewhere safe.’ And that’s when the phone line went dead.”

Virzera’s managers immediately had every window in the building closed. They moved all employees to the lowest levels of the building. Virzera, who was thoroughly shaken, walked down the stairs.

“All I could do was pray my Rosary. It was all I could do to hold it together,” she said.

Franciscan Father Brian Jordan is a priest at St. Francis of Assisi parish in Manhattan, some four miles north of Ground Zero. He heard the news when he was in his office. Like many priests in the city, he headed to Ground Zero.

He spent the rest of the day blessing the dead and comforting the living.

In the months to come, Father Jordan would have full access to the site and was allowed to celebrate Mass there on a regular basis. He was with the group that recovered a cross-shaped fragment of I-beams among the ruins on Oct. 4.

“I was asked about 500 times [on Sept. 11], ‘Why did God do this?’ And I always gave the same answer: God does not destroy what he creates. This was the evil act of misguided men who abused their own free will,” said Father Jordan.

‘Wake-Up Call’

The spiritual impact of 9/11 was immediate in New York, and across the country. There were huge turnouts at Mass and long lines for confession.

“We saw people who hadn’t received Communion in years. People began to pray,” Father Jordan said.

He also saw a noticeable improvement in race relations and among social classes. Though Mass attendance and confession lines have waned in the years since, he contended that relations among New Yorkers have not gone back to their pre-9/11 status.

Msgr. O’Connell said it is impossible to say if the spiritual impact immediately after 9/11 was permanent. For those who converted after 9/11, anecdotal evidence is that this event was a part of the process.

In Washington, political reporter Tim Carney noted that it became more acceptable to talk about religion and pray in public. President Bush called for a day of prayer several days after the event.

“Mentions of religion became more acceptable,” said Carney, who is now an editor at Regnery Publishing. “That’s still true today.”

For Hinrichsen, the greatest change after the attacks was in the attitude of co-workers. In particular, people became less cynical.

“At the height of 2000, the stock market was soaring. 9/11 was a big wake-up call. It made me question everything,” he said. “I was getting too much into the whole money culture. I realized it and didn’t want it. Today, work is meaningful by how much I can contribute. Helping people at work is fulfilling.”

For Virzera, the tragedy led her to practice her faith at an even deeper level.

“9/11 taught me that it’s easy to be lulled into a false sense of security about the permanence of our lives,” she said. “It taught me that this life is a passage. It taught me what life was about.”

Sabrina Arena Ferrisi is based in Mamaroneck, New York.