[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 20]
[House]
[Page 28544]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

                                 PRAYER

  The Chaplain, the Reverend Daniel P. Coughlin, offered the following 
prayer:
  ``When faith came to be in writings rather than in hearts, contention 
grew hot and love grew cold. That which is forced cannot be sincere and 
that which is not voluntary cannot please the Lord.'' These words of 
the medieval humanist, Erasmus, give us pause, Lord, as this Congress 
faces today's problems.
  True faith is such a tender gift by which You massage the human 
heart. If faith does not spring spontaneously from within, it becomes 
dead men's quotes or rigid braces for feeble limbs.
  The freedom of religion cannot live in legislative words or inanimate 
objects. Religious faith must be allowed to find its own expression 
freely. Left alone, faith will flourish in its own time and find its 
own roots, perhaps in open fields or in surprising cracks of our own 
pavement. Only when faith takes life will You be glorified, O Lord.
  Amen.

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