HARRISBURG –State Senator Doug Mastriano (R-33) announced today he is joining State Rep Stephanie Borowicz (Center/Clinton County) in calling for Pennsylvanians to pray for their state and nation Monday, March 30.
In her announcement, Representative Borowicz stated: “I am following in the footsteps of past leaders and their handling of national and state crisis. In this situation, I have looked to the exact words of Abraham Lincoln, who called for a day of fasting and prayer at a pivotal point of our nation’s history.”
Senator Mastriano added: “Representative Borowicz’s call for prayer is timely and we need God’s intervention in these days that try our souls.”
“America’s great leaders going back to George Washington consistently called out to God in challenging times and this is one of those moments,” continued Mastriano. “We must come together as one in prayer, asking God to deliver us from COVID-19, heal those suffering from the virus and protect those not infected. We also ask for God to grant our President and Governor wisdom during this crisis.”
Rep Borowicz’s selection of Monday, March 30 for the day of prayer marks a historic anniversary for our nation.
On that day in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued an appeal for the nation to ask for God’s intervention in the midst of the bloody American Civil War. After a string of defeats at the hands of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, the survival of the Union was in the balance.
To compound matters, Spain, France and the United Kingdom seemed poised to enter the war on the side of the Confederacy. If that happened, the war would be lost and history forever changed. In the midst of this, President Abraham Lincoln, together with the Senate, called the nation to prayer.
Lincoln’s words in his proclamation seem particularly poignant today: “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.”
Lincoln continued: “Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
The prayer of President Lincoln and the American people on March 30, 1863 was answered at Gettysburg a few months later where the tide of the war turned. That victory, combined with surrender of Vicksburg to General Grant, put the Union on the path of winning the war.
“Much of this has been sadly taken out of our history books,” said Mastriano. “This is a tragic situation, as even progressive presidents, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, offered prayers more powerful than you hear in many pulpits these days. This is one of those moments when we should come together and as President Lincoln said, it behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
CONTACT: Scot Andrew Pitzer; spitzer@pasen.gov