Of Fireworks and First Light: A Prayer for True Patriotism
Healthy patriotism, the kind that carries both the stale scent of an old flag and the wild sweet tang of prayer, always begins in reverence—and this is not, I think, a trivial idea. Reverence, as Archbishop Fulton Sheen reminds with that brisk, crisp voice that seemed to toss niceties to the wind, is a matter of memory and humility forged together. America, he once said, is built atop a declaration not merely of independence, but—tucked slyly between words—a declaration of dependence: a hand outstretched to God, as honest as a child asking, are you there?
The Catechism, ever gentle and insistent, says that love of country is a “duty of gratitude”—a devotion to the community and to the land that feeds, shelters, and shapes us (CCC 2239). But no honest Catholic can leave this duty unexamined, for faith demands a deep, searching love—one that never canonizes nation but instead subordinates all things to God. Gaudium et Spes whispers it best: we are to “foster the common good,” helping build a society that protects the dignity of every person, especially the voiceless and the small. In this way, patriotism is baptismal, a living of responsibility as stewards and neighbors.
If this nation has a pulse, Sheen might say, it is only because there beats beneath its ribs the belief that freedom, justice, and dignity are not ideas concocted by clever men, but gifts radiating from God. The founding documents—earnest, awkward, desperate as a teenager—see rights as unalienable precisely because they are divine in origin. Catholic faith, then, shakes out the dust from parades and pledges and insists that only by staying close to the source—the Giver—can the gifts of liberty be sustained.
But Sheen saw with painful clarity that patriotism wanders into dangerous country, either swelling into idolatry (flag as altar, anthem as creed), or shrinking into apathy (shrug, sneer, nothing matters). He warned against these: excessive nationalism, a kind of collective pride that bows to no god but itself; and the quiet poison of detachment, a refusal to care for the body politic at all. Catholic life, properly lived, calls for eyes that are both clear and moist: clear to spot the bright and the broken in the nation, moist to remain tender at her struggles and sins.
So how, exactly, might a Catholic renew fidelity to country, without losing sight of heaven? Begin on your knees, not in fear but in hope. Seek the face of God before the shadowed hills of politics and party. And rise to serve—not as a partisan, not as a cynic, but as a keeper of the common good, a guardian of the little ones, the broken-spined, the hungry children and the haunted old. It is faith, not fury, that rebuilds. The country, like a field in spring, needs tilling hearts much more than thundering speeches.
To love America, Sheen and the Church remind, is not to love her blindly, nor only for her amber waves and monstrous geese and humming highways, but to love her by engaging, sacrificing, building, and—above all—praying that her gifts be true to their origin. “If we wish to keep our rights and liberties, we must keep our God. Piety and patriotism go together,” said Sheen, his voice half hymn, half warning. May we begin again in gratitude, and bend always toward the light from which the nation first took fire.
References:
Archbishop Fulton Sheen, “Life is Worth Living” on EWTN
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2239
Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, 74
