[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 36 (Monday, March 19, 2001)]
[House]
[Page H957]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 PRAYER

  The Chaplain, the Reverend Daniel P. Coughlin, offered the following 
prayer:
  You alone, Lord God, call us to worship. Through Your prophet Isaias, 
You alone call even our prayer to judgment. You bring our vaulted 
ceilings to be a cracked roof upon our heads. You say, ``What care I 
for the number of your sacrifices? Who asks these things of you? I will 
not listen.''
  Learn from the orphan's plea. Have you ever listened to the lament of 
the child in search of a father? When rid of your heart's indifference, 
I will be different. Only then will I again be attentive to your 
prayer.
  You speak of the Nation. Yet ego blinds you to rejoice only in the 
gathering of your own. Steeled in your righteous Sunday best, I do not 
see your heart moved toward Me or toward those just outside the temple 
door or across the street.
  O Lord, by Your Spirit, pierce us to the heart so the sacrifice born 
of spirit and truth be revealed in us now and forever. Amen.

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