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The Gospel purifies and renews: it bears fruit wherever the community of believers hears and welcomes the grace of God in truth and lives in charity. This is my faith; this is my joy.

God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: 'This is my country.'

Today we thank God for all the blessings He has bestowed upon this great Country and ask Him to continue to heal our land and meet our needs - and we do so through the power of prayer.

We can take full comfort in realizing the continuing strength of our nation. America's lands remain radiantly rich with diversity, and freedom still reigns.

Our country - whether bounded by the St. John's and the Sabine, or however otherwise bounded or described, and be the measurements more or less; - still our country, to be cherished in all our hearts, and to be defended by all our hands.

The world tells us in a thousand different ways that the bigger we become, the freer we will be. The richer, the more beautiful, and the more powerful we grow, the more security, liberty, and happiness we will experience. And yet, the gospel tells us just the opposite, that the smaller we become, the freer we will be.

We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it, that governs it by the virtue of its language and savage culture.

A Country is not a mere territory; the particular territory is only its foundation. The Country is the idea which rises upon that foundation; it is the sentiment of love, the sense of fellowship which binds together all the sons of that territory.

Territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life.

We cannot have the fruits of the gospel without its roots.