Today, we join together as a State and a nation to pray for the victims who were lost on one of the darkest days in American history.

We pray for the children who will go to bed this evening without their mothers and fathers, for the mothers and fathers who've lost the children they loved, and for the husbands and wives who will return to empty homes. We pray for the firefighters, police officers and rescue workers who tragically died while committing extraordinary acts of heroism.

We pray, also, for this great nation of ours, a nation that is free, a nation that is strong, a nation that is united in grief. For we know that the freedom we cherish as Americans which hundreds of thousands of Americans paid for with their lives exposes us to the wicked, murderous, cowardly forces of hate.

The forces of evil that committed this atrocity against humankind have caused pain that will last for generations, pain that has claimed the lives of innocent men, women and children. But evil never prevails. Freedom, despite its vulnerabilities to that evil, always will.