The 25th anniversary of 9/11 was a time of immense sadness and reflection on what will surely remain one of the darkest days in the collective memory of our generation.

I have no doubt that, like me, you remember exactly where you were on 11 September 2001, even without the numerous television programmes and acres of column inches over the past week to remind you.

I was in my GP’s surgery, still reeling from the original crash, when the second plane flew into the Twin Towers. My doctor and I stood watching in stunned silence, neither of us able to comprehend what we were seeing or to believe it could be anything other than the most bizarre and terrible coincidence.

As we remembered this past week all those who perished in such brutal and senseless circumstances, it’s hard not to drown beneath the terrible weight of those atrocities. What keeps me from doing so is remembering the stories of extraordinary courage and love that shone through the darkness.

Fred Rogers often recalled the advice his mother gave him whenever frightening things appeared on the news.

“Look for the helpers,” she told a young Fred. “You will always find people who are helping.”

On 11 September 2001, one of those helpers was Irish-American Franciscan priest Father Mychal Judge, whose ancestors came from Co Leitrim. Growing up in Brooklyn during the Great Depression, and following the early death of his father, Mychal worked as a shoeshine boy. He began visiting the friars at St Francis of Assisi Church and, at the age of 15, started the process of joining their order. Ordained in 1961, Father Mychal spent many years ministering to the lost, the lonely and anyone else who needed his help. He was also a force for change within the Catholic Church. A member of Dignity, a group that challenged the Church’s attitude towards homosexuality, he established an AIDS ministry at a time when that terrible disease was ravaging a generation of young gay men, many of whom were met with fear rather than compassion.

The legacy of Father Mychal’s love, not only on that day, but throughout his remarkable ministry has not been forgotten. In 2005, a memorial garden was opened in his ancestral homeland of Leitrim. Sitting peacefully on the edge of Keshcarrigan Lake, on land formerly owned by Mychal’s family, it is known locally as Judge’s Shore

As chaplain to the New York City Fire Department, he was among the first people to arrive at the Twin Towers after the planes struck, and was administering the last rites and praying for those trapped when he was killed by falling debris in the lobby of the North Tower. His body was the first to be officially recovered and identified, leading him to become known as ‘Victim 0001’.

His funeral was attended by more than 3,000 people, including Bill and Hillary Clinton. Delivering the homily, Father Michael Duffy asked why, of all the thousands who had died, Mychal Judge had been recorded as number one.

Answering his own question, he said, “I think I know the answer. Mychal Judge is going to be on the other side of death to greet them.”

The legacy of Father Mychal’s love, not only on that day, but throughout his remarkable ministry has not been forgotten. In 2005, a memorial garden was opened in his ancestral homeland of Leitrim. Sitting peacefully on the edge of Keshcarrigan Lake, on land formerly owned by Mychal’s family, it is known locally as Judge’s Shore.

On the other side of the Atlantic, hundreds gathered last week, as they do every year, for the annual Walk of Remembrance. Walking ‘in his shoes’, they retraced the journey Father Mychal took on that fateful morning through the city to St Peter’s Church, where his body was carried after being recovered from Ground Zero.

In an interview given many years before his death, Father Mychal wondered aloud what his final hour might hold. “Will it be trying to help someone, trying to save a life?”

Twenty-five years later, as those unbearable images returned to our television screens, I looked again for the helpers – and there stood Father Mychal Judge. A man who died as he had lived, offering comfort, courage and love to those who needed him.