[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3522]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

                                 PRAYER

  The Chaplain, the Reverend Daniel P. Coughlin, offered the following 
prayer:
  Lord God, Your living Word exhorts us: ``Be compassionate as Your 
heavenly Father is compassionate.''
  Lord, help us to unmask the illusion of our deep competitive nature.
  Maturity in faith takes us beyond our childish games of winners and 
losers.
  The high drama of sports and the profits of markets leave us only 
with empty consequences that take us to the next turnstile or video 
game of self-absorption.
  Lift us out of our competitiveness with one another into Your divine 
wholeness. By our union with You, Lord, may we enter into new 
relationships with one another.
  There, freed from greed and the fear of suffering, may we enter the 
truth of all those who like ourselves share in the experience of 
brokenness, confusion, and anguish.
  We become vulnerable with the vulnerable, powerless with the 
powerless, humbly one with You, the God of compassion, and we find new 
life, which satisfies forever.
  Amen.

                          ____________________