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by President George W. BushWe 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.
Now come the names; the list of casualties is only beginning. We will read all these names. We will linger over them and learn their stories, and Americans will weep. To the children, parents, spouses, families and friends of the lost, we offer the deepest sympathy of the nation. And I assure you: You are not alone.
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 there is a searching and an honesty. At St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, 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.
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.
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 not 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.
Excerpted from President Bush's remarks at the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance at the Washington National Cathedral, September 14, 2001.
Reprinted with permission from 911remembrance.com. Copyright 2002. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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