Finish the Race: Obama in Boston: The New Yorker "Massachusetts invented America," Governor Deval Patrick said, to applause, at Thursday morning's interfaith service at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, which honored the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. It's the kind of thing you expect to hear in Boston, which can be a parochial place, sometimes too proud. Yet, as President Obama noted in the speech that followed, all Americans were thinking about the city. "Every one of us has been touched by this attack on your beloved city," he said. Every one of us stands with you. The marathon attacks were personal, he said. Since Monday, the sight of blue and yellow and orange marathon gear, of people wearing medals, even of joggers out on the streets, has all carried extra meaning - as if running itself has become a minor political act, one of stoic defiance. And so, fittingly, running was the central metaphor of the day's speeches. It was echoed in words from Isaiah - "they shall run, and not be weary" - and in Obama's paraphrase of Hebrews: "We must run with endurance the race that is set before us." He promised to the people of Boston, "You will run again." Later, he said, "Even when our heart aches, we summon the strength that maybe we didn't even know we had. We finish the race. That sentiment of resolve - a defiance based on civil liberties and common purpose, marathon as metaphor - was repeated in the service. The Boston Marathon, as Metropolitan Methodios, representing the Greek Orthodox community of New England, noted early in the service, it is a political event, too. It recalls Philippides" run from Marathon to Athens and, held each year on Patriots" Day, it marks the memory of Lexington and Concord. If the marathon represents an idea about democracy, then so, too, does how we respond to an attack on it. Obama's speech made sparing references to the person or people who carried out the bombing. The great power of his words came from their restraint - not from threats but from declarations of carrying on: We will find you. We will hold you accountable. But more than that, our fidelity to our way of life - to our free and open society - will only grow stronger. For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity but one of power and love and self-discipline The explosions on Monday had also shown that Boston is, as President Obama noted in his speech, a city of the world, and a place full of young people, many from very far away. Boston draws people in, if just for a short time, before sending them back into the world - it did that for him, when he was a law student. It drew Lu Lingzi, who travelled from Shenyang, China, to Boston University to study for her masters, and who died on Monday. Before Obama arrived, I spoke to Michael Yaffe, a trauma surgeon who cared for patients in the aftermath at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He was waiting in line to enter the church. Yaffe is a reservist in the military, and said that the flying shrapnel thrown from small, improvised bombs made for a classic I.E.D. attack. "I never expected to see anything like that in the civilian world," he said, by which he also meant: never here at home. Steve McHugh, who has been a paramedic in Boston since 1991, was a volunteer in one of the medical tents at the end of the race. I saw all the carnage and was there for the victims. It haunts me, and I need to memorialize and honor them," he said, explaining why he had come. I asked McHugh what he wanted to hear from the President. "I hope that he condemns violence against innocent people in any form," he said. I hope that he recognizes this act as the lowest form of criminality. I hope that he attempts to give people a sense of direction and purpose going forward. But I can't expect any one person to do that. Obama said those things, as did others, but a single memorial service indeed could not answer all of the questions that remain; most pressingly, a case still needs to be solved. Yet the service did offer a unified public declaration of a city's, and a country's, dedication to an open society, undiminished in the face of terrorism. Eight clergymembers from different faiths took part in the service. Cardinal Seán Patrick O'Malley, Archbishop of Boston, brought words from Pope Francis, calling for hope and restraint. "The Holy Father prays that we will be united in the resolve not to be overcome by evil but to combat evil with good," O'Malley said. Nancy S. Taylor, senior minister at Old South Church - which is located right at the race's finish line on Boylston, and becomes, each year, a congregation for marathoners - ended her remarks by asserting "Another's hate will not make of us haters. Another's cruelty will only redouble our mercy. Nasser S. Wedaddy, a Muslim leader and chairman of the New England Interfaith Council, spoke at the service about how, just last week, he - as he put it, a "lowly immigrant from Mauritania" - had gathered with hundreds of others in Faneuil Hall to take the oath of citizenship. Even without an oath, he said, "We know instinctively that we must rise to the occasion and act because of our common humanity. That's what makes us Americans. Perhaps the most moving moments of the service came from Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, who has suffered from several illnesses this year, and is recovering from leg surgery. He arrived at the lectern in a wheelchair, but struggled to his feet to speak, frail but defiant, about his city. I have never loved it and its people more than I do today. Not just his own city: "Yes, we even love New York City more. "Sweet Caroline" played at Yankee Stadium, and our city's flag flown in lower Manhattan." Then he talked about the three young people who died. Photograph by Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty