[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[January 2, 2000]
[Pages 2-3]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Prayer at Christmas II: Holy Eucharist Services
January 2, 2000

    The President. Gathered in the spirit of truth and hope, in unity 
and peace, at the beginning of the new year, the dawn of a new century, 
and at the turn of the third millennium, let us offer before God our 
prayers and thanksgivings.
    We give You thanks, O God, for the goodness and love You have made 
known to us in creation. You fill the world with beauty. Open our eyes 
to see Your handiwork in all creation and in one another.
    Audience members. We thank You and praise You, O God.
    The First Lady. We give You 
thanks, O God, for Your church throughout the world, and for religious 
faith and freedom in this country. Grant that all who seek You by many 
names may be united in Your truth, live together in Your love, and 
reveal Your glory in the world.
    Audience members. We thank You and praise You, O God.
    The President. We give You thanks, O God, for our Nation; for the 
gifts of liberty, freedom, and peace; for the women and men who have 
made this country strong. Give us, like them, a zeal for justice and 
truth, and grant that we and all the people of this land may, by Your 
grace, be strengthened to maintain our liberties and righteousness and 
peace.
    Audience members. We thank You and praise You, O God.
    The First Lady. We pray also for 
the world, for the leaders of the nations and for those who strive and 
work for peace, that all swords may be turned into plowshares and none 
may hurt or destroy.
    Audience members. We thank You and praise You, O God.
    The President. We give You thanks, O God, for creating all humanity 
in Your image, for the wonderful diversity of Your children, of Your 
races and creeds, cultures and tongues. Enrich our lives by ever-
widening circles of fellowship, and show us Your presence in those who 
differ most from us.
    Audience members. We thank You and praise You, O God.
    The First Lady. In offering You 
thanks, O God, we become aware of our failings and shortcomings. Time 
after time, we fail to strive for the vision and world You hold out to 
us. We do not honor one another. We abuse Your creation. We take for 
granted our resources, and we fail to recognize Your gracious hand in 
the harvests of land and sea. Grant us a respect for your whole world.
    Audience members. Forgive us, heal us, and restore us, O God.
    The President. Time after time, O God, we fail to follow Your ways 
and to live up to the hopes of our Founding Fathers and Mothers. We turn 
from the path of justice and peace to follow the way of hatred and 
anger. So move our hearts that barriers which divide us may crumble, 
suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease, and that, in Your wisdom and 
love, we may live with our world family in true justice and peace.
    Audience members. Forgive us, heal us, and restore us, O God.
    The First Lady. Time after time, 
O God, we hoard the bounty of Your goodness. We store

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up goods for ourselves and ignore the cry of the poor and hungry. We 
store up liberty and justice for ourselves and ignore the cry of the 
oppressed. Look with favor upon the people of this and every land who 
live with injustice, terror, poverty, disease, and death, and grant that 
we who are so richly blessed may, with Your help, respond with costly 
love and compassion.
    Audience members. Forgive us, heal us, and restore us, O God.
    The President. Let us pray.
    Dear Lord, as we awaken to this second morning of a new millennium, 
help us to remember that all we are and all we do begins with You, for 
whom a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a 
watch in the night.
    So we begin this jubilee year in humility, with profound thanks for 
the divine light first revealed 2,000 years ago that has brought us now 
to this sacred place today. Each in our own way, we thank You for the 
blessings of this life. For me and my family, I give You thanks for good 
health, good fortune, and the opportunity to serve the American people.
    We thank You for the amazing grace You have shown in getting us 
through and beyond our individual and collective sins and trials. 
Through the darkest hours of the 20th century, the shameful trauma of 
racial oppression, the pain and sacrifice of war, the fear and 
deprivation of depression, when all we could do was walk by faith, it 
was Your guiding light that saw us through.
    We thank You for the promise of the new century and ask Your 
guidance and grace in helping us to make the most of it; to free our 
children of hunger, neglect, and war; to ease the burdens of the less 
fortunate; to strengthen the bonds of family; to preserve and protect 
our earthly home; to use new advances in science and technology to lift 
all the human family and draw us all closer together.
    Finally, we thank You for the rich and wonderful diversity of human 
life with which You have graced this planet and ask You to give us the 
strength and wisdom to give up our fear, distrust, and hatred of those 
who are different. Teach us instead to learn from each other and 
celebrate our differences, secure in the knowledge that we are all Your 
children.
    Our Constitution tells us You created us all equal. Jesus told us to 
love our neighbors as ourselves. The Koran says we must do unto all men 
as you wish to have done to you and reject for others what you would 
reject for yourself. The Talmud instructs us, should anyone turn aside 
the right of the stranger, it is as though he were to turn aside the 
right of the most high God.
    By Your grace, we have survived in spite of our blindness to this, 
Your truth. Help us now to accept at long last the enduring truth that 
the most important fact of life is not wealth or power or beauty or 
scientific advance but our kinship as brothers and sisters and our 
oneness as children of God.
    This, Holy Father, is our prayer for the new millennium.
    Audience members. Amen.

Note: The President spoke at 11:44 a.m. at Washington National 
Cathedral.