The Senate on Monday memorialized former Senate Chaplain Lloyd John Ogilvie, who died on June 5 at age 88.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke fondly of the way Ogilvie provided spiritual guidance to senators during the chaplain’s tenure from 1995 through 2003. McConnell noted those times featured the challenges of lawmakers dealing with 9/11, the anthrax scare and a host of their own personal challenges.

“On all of these matters, so many people sought guidance, comfort and counsel from Lloyd,” the Kentucky Republican said on the Senate floor Monday. “And every single day, he provided it. A joyful, consistent, straightforward messenger and example of God’s love.”

McConnell added that Ogilvie, a Presbyterian minister, offered common ground in Bible study.

Ogilvie was the 61st chaplain of the United States Senate, a job in which he opened the Senate each day with a prayer and counseled senators.

He also counseled lawmaker families, led Bible study, prayer groups and encouraged the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, according to his biography on the Fuller Seminary website. In 2006, Ogilvie helped found Fuller’s Lloyd John Ogilvie Institute of Preaching.

He wrote many books and served as general editor for the 33-volume Communicators Commentary of the Bible. Ogilvie was born in Kenosha, Wis., and went on to serve as a pastor in Illinois, Pennsylvania and California before arriving in the Senate in 1995.

Following Ogilvie’s death Senator Charles E. Grassley tweeted about the chaplain.

“Dr Ogilvie Chaplain of Senate 95/2003 and a devoted servant of Jesus Christ died,” Grassley wrote on Twitter. “Like all chaplains in the senate all the public knows is opening daily prayer. He and all hold many bible studies/console bereaved families/preside funerals/much more/RIP.”