奥巴马总统在白宫复活节祈祷早餐会英语演讲稿

奥巴马总统在白宫复活节祈祷早餐会英语

演讲稿

welcome to the white house andwelcome to our annual easter prayer breakfast. as always,we are blessed to be joined by so many good friends fromaround the country. we vegotdistinguished guests. we ve got faithleaders, members of my administration who are here.and i will once again resist the temptationto preach to preachers. (laughter.) it never worksout well. i am reminded of the admonition from the bookof romans -- do not claim to bewiser than you are. (laughter.) so this morning, i want to offer some very brief reflections aswe startthis easter season.

but as i was preparing myremarks, something intervened yesterday. and so i want to justdevote a few words about yesterday s tragedy inkansas. this morning our prayers are withthepeople of overland park. and we restill learning the details, but this much we know. a gunmanopened fire at two jewish facilities-- a community center and a retirement home. innocentpeople were killed. their families were devastated. and this violence has struck the heart ofthe jewish community

in kansascity.

two of the victims -- agrandfather and his teenage [grand] son -- attended the unitedmethodist churchof the resurrection, which is led by our friend reverend adam hamilton.some of you may know that during myinauguration, reverend hamilton delivered the sermonat the prayer service atthe national cathedral. and i wasgrateful for his presence and hiswords. he joined us at our breakfast last year. and at the easter service for palm sunday lastnight, he had to breakthis terrible news to his congregation.

that this occurred now -- as jewswere preparing to celebrate passover, as christians wereobserving palm sunday--makes this tragedy all the more painful. and today, as passoverbegins, we re seeing a number of synagogues andjewish community centers take addedsecurity precautions. nobody should have to worry about theirsecurity when gathering withtheir fellow believers. no one should ever have to fear for theirsafety when they go to pray.

and as a government, we re goingto provide whatever assistance is needed to support theinvestigation. as americans, we not only need to open ourhearts to the families of the victims,we ve got to stand united against thiskind of terrible

violence, which has no place in oursociety. and we have to keep coming together acrossfaiths to combat the ignorance andintolerance, including anti-semitism thatcan lead to hatred and to violence, because we reall children of god. we re all made in his image, all worthy ofhis love and dignity. and we seewhathappens around the world when this kind of religious-based or tinged violencecan rear itsugly head. it s got no placein our society.

so this easter week, of course werecognize that there s a lot of pain and a lot of sin and alot of tragedy inthis world, but we re also overwhelmed by the grace of an awesome god. we rereminded how he loves us, so deeply,that he gave his only begotten son so that we might livethrough him. and in these holy days, we recall all thatjesus endured for us -- the scorn of thecrowds and the pain of thecrucifixion, in our christian religious tradition we celebrate theglory of theresurrection -- all so that we might be forgiven of our sins and grantedeverlastinglife.

and more than 2,000 years later,it inspires us still. we are drawn tohis timeless teachings,challenged to be worthy of his sacrifice, to emulate asbest we can his eternal example tolove one another just as he loves us. and of course, we re always