Transcript of
President Bush's Prayer Service Remarks
National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the
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We are here in the
middle hour of our grief. So many have suffered so great a loss, and
today we express our nation's sorrow. We come before God to pray for
the missing and the dead, and for those who loved them. On Tuesday, our country
was attacked with deliberate and massive cruelty. We have seen the images
of fire and ashes and bent steel. Now come the names,
the list of casualties we are only beginning. They are the names of
men and women who began their day at a desk or in an airport, busy with
life. They are the names of people who faced death and in their last
moments called home to say, be brave and I love you. They are the names
of passengers who defied their murderers and prevented the murder of
others on the ground. They are the names of men and women who wore the
uniform of the United States and died at their posts. They are the names
of rescuers -- the ones whom death found running up the stairs and into
the fires to help others. We will read all these names. We will linger
over them and learn their stories, and many Americans will weep. To the children and
parents and spouses and families and friends of the lost, we offer the
deepest sympathy of the nation. And I assure you, you are not alone.
Just three days removed
from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of history,
but our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these
attacks and rid the world of evil. War has been waged
against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful,
but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing
and terms of others; it will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing.
Our purpose as a nation
is firm, yet our wounds as a people are recent and unhealed and lead
us to pray. In many of our prayers this week, there's a searching and
an honesty. At St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, on Tuesday, a woman
said, "I pray to God to give us a sign that he's still here."
Others have prayed
for the same, searching hospital to hospital, carrying pictures of those
still missing. God's signs are not
always the ones we look for. We learn in tragedy that his purposes are
not always our own, yet the prayers of private suffering, whether in
our homes or in this great cathedral are known and heard and understood.
There are prayers that
help us last through the day or endure the night. There are prayers
of friends and strangers that give us strength for the journey, and
there are prayers that yield our will to a will greater than our own.
This world He created
is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time.
Goodness, remembrance and love have no end, and the Lord of life holds
all who die and all who mourn. It is said that adversity
introduces us to ourselves. This is true of a nation
as well. In this trial, we have been reminded and the world has seen
that our fellow Americans are generous and kind, resourceful and brave.
We see our national
character in rescuers working past exhaustion, in long lines of blood
donors, in thousands of citizens who have asked to work and serve in
any way possible. And we have seen our national character in eloquent
acts of sacrifice. Inside the World Trade Center, one man who could
have saved himself stayed until the end and at the side of his quadriplegic
friend. A beloved priest died giving the last rites to a firefighter.
Two office workers, finding a disabled stranger, carried her down 68
floors to safety. A group of men drove
through the night from Dallas to Washington to bring skin grafts for
burned victims. In these acts and many others, Americans showed a deep
commitment to one another and in an abiding love for our country. Today, we feel what
Franklin Roosevelt called, "the warm courage of national unity."
This is a unity of every faith and every background. This has joined
together political parties and both houses of Congress. It is evident
in services of prayer and candlelight vigils and American flags, which
are displayed in pride and waved in defiance. Our unity is a kinship
of grief and a steadfast resolve to prevail against our enemies. And
this unity against terror is now extending across the world. America is a nation
full of good fortune, with so much to be grateful for, but we are not
spared from suffering. In every generation, the world has produced enemies
of human freedom. They have attacked America because we are freedom's
home and defender, and the commitment of our fathers is now the calling
of our time. On this national day
of prayer and remembrance, we ask almighty God to watch over our nation
and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come. We pray that
He will comfort and console those who now walk in sorrow. We thank Him
for each life we now must mourn, and the promise of a life to come.
As we've been assured,
neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor powers nor
things present nor things to come nor height nor depth can separate
us from God's love. May He bless the souls
of the departed. May He comfort our own. And may He always guide our
country. God bless America. |