[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 37, Number 37 (Monday, September 17, 2001)]
[Pages 1309-1310]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance Service

September 14, 2001

    We 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 love 
them.
    On Tuesday our country was attacked with deliberate and massive 
cruelty. We have seen the images of fire and ashes and bent steel. Now 
come the names, the list of casualties we are only beginning to read.
    They are the names of men and women who began their day at a desk or 
in an airport, busy with life. They are the names of people who faced 
death and in their last moments called home to say, ``Be brave,'' and, 
``I love you.'' They are the names of passengers who defied their 
murderers and prevented the murder of others on the ground. They are the 
names of men and women who wore the uniform of the United States and 
died at their posts. They are the names of rescuers, the ones whom death 
found running up the stairs and into the fires to help others. We will 
read all these names. We will linger over them and learn their stories, 
and many Americans will weep.
    To the children and parents and spouses and families and friends of 
the lost, we offer the deepest sympathy of the Nation. And I assure you, 
you are not alone.
    Just 3 days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the 
distance of history. But our responsibility to history is already clear: 
To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.
    War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This 
Nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was 
begun on the timing and terms

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of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing.
    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 this 
week, there is a searching and an honesty. At St. Patrick's Cathedral in 
New York on Tuesday, a woman said, ``I prayed to God to give us a sign 
that He is 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.
    It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves. This is true 
of a nation, as well. In this trial, we have been reminded, and the 
world has seen, that our fellow Americans are generous and kind, 
resourceful and brave. We see our national character in rescuers working 
past exhaustion, in long lines of blood donors, in thousands of citizens 
who have asked to work and serve in any way possible.
    And we have seen our national character in eloquent acts of 
sacrifice. Inside the World Trade Center, one man, who could have saved 
himself, stayed until the end at the side of his quadriplegic friend. A 
beloved priest died giving the last rites to a firefighter. Two 
officeworkers, finding a disabled stranger, carried her down 68 floors 
to safety. A group of men drove through the night from Dallas to 
Washington to bring skin grafts for burn victims.
    In these acts, and in many others, Americans showed a deep 
commitment to one another and an abiding love for our country. Today we 
feel what Franklin Roosevelt called the warm courage of national unity. 
This is a unity of every faith and every background. It has joined 
together political parties in both Houses of Congress. It is evident in 
services of prayer and candlelight vigils and American flags, which are 
displayed in pride and wave 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.
    America is a nation full of good fortune, with so much to be 
grateful for. But we are not spared from suffering. In every generation, 
the world has produced enemies of human freedom. They have attacked 
America because we are freedom's home and defender. And the commitment 
of our fathers is now the calling of our time.
    On this national day of prayer and remembrance, 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 have been assured, neither death nor 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.

Note: The President spoke at 1 p.m. at the National Cathedral. A tape 
was not available for verification of the content of these remarks.