Prayer Offered for February 23, 2026
Upon invitation of the President, the following prayer was offered by Senator Richardson, as written by the Chaplain, Sister Michelle Gorman, RSM:
Today we pray for all including ourselves experiencing struggles personally, professionally, and in the world. May we have the strength to persevere through all the difficulties and injustices that life brings and have the wisdom to move forward.
In the words of Frederick Douglass in New York back on August 3rd, 1857:
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
For those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are the people who want crops without plowing up the ground;
They want rain without thunder and lightning;
They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it is a struggle.
(“West India Emancipation” by Frederick Douglass)
Gracious God, may all that we do be done in truth. We pray for the fortitude never to abandon our struggles and our work, to uphold the dignity and rights of all our brothers and sisters. We ask this in Your name.—AMEN.
