Marine Corps Base Quantico leaders marked the annual National Prayer Breakfast on Tuesday morning, gathering at the Bruce Hall chow hall to pray for guidance.

“When I was young, I was the simple faithful,” said guest speaker Maj. Gen. Thomas Murray, commanding officer of Training and Education Command, noting that religion was taken for granted as part of his family life, school and even sports. Later, after doing “a lot of praying in flight school,” Murray ended up serving in Lebanon, where the suffering he witnessed caused many of his comrades-in-arms to begin to doubt their faith. Murray, however, attributed the violence to human choices rather than the hand of God.

Nonetheless, he said, over the years he realized that he had stopped praying, feeling torn between his faith and the act of warfare.

“I think there was some kind of a conflict there that made it difficult for me to do the two together.”

He said he continues to struggle to reconcile reason with religion, but he also has resumed praying for guidance. He noted that all faiths share the common characteristic of being difficult to understand rationally and said they wouldn’t be called faiths if belief came easily.

“Where I want to go back to is being that simple, faithful individual who I was as a child,” Murray said.

Ten chaplains from the base and its tenant organizations took turns guiding the event, many of them delivering meditations on the Lord’s Prayer.

The event was the base’s celebration of the National Prayer Breakfast, which has been held on the first Thursday of February every year since 1953 in Washington, D.C. The president, senators and other national and international leaders attended the National Prayer Breakfast in the nation’s capital on Feb. 7.

— Writer: mdicicco@quanticosentryonline.com