The following is the text of an address
given by President Bush at a memorial service at
Washington’s National Cathedral for the victims
of Tuesday’s attacks in New York and
Washington. 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 loved 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. 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.
‘DEFIED THEIR MURDERERS’
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 three 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 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’s a searching and an
honesty. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, on
Tuesday, a woman said, “I pray to God to give us a sign
that he’s 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.
‘OUR NATIONAL CHARACTER’
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
and at the side of his quadriplegic friend. A beloved priest
died giving the last rites to a firefighter. Two office workers,
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 burned victims. In these
acts and many others, Americans showed a deep
commitment to one another and in 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. This has joined together political
parties and both houses of Congress. It is evident in
services of prayer and candlelight vigils and American flags,
which are displayed in pride and waved 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.
‘NOT SPARED FROM SUFFERING’
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’ve 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.
