Faith, Memory, and America’s 250th Anniversary

Welcome to episode 31 of the Saint John the Baptist Catholic Parish Podcast from Fort Lauderdale. Be sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify so you can be notified every time we release a new episode Alright. Around the parish this week, we wanna begin with the July 4. The parish bulletin includes a prayer for the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of our independence, asking God to make us a people of faith, hope, and charity, united by his grace and guided by the light of his truth. On Saturday, July 4, Saint John the Baptist will have the regular 08:45 morning mass, and the 05:00 mass that evening includes an intention for The United States Of America.

The parish office will also be closed on Friday, July 3. This is a good week to pray for our country, to thank God for the blessings we have received, and to ask him to guide our nation in faithfulness and peace. As The United States approaches its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, it is worth asking a simple Catholic question. What does it mean to remember well? An anniversary is more than a date on a calendar.

It is an invitation to gratitude. It asks us to pause, look back, and recognize that we have received gifts we did not create for ourselves. Catholics should understand this instinct deeply because the Church knows how to remember. The Church does not treat memory as a hobby for historians. She treats memory as part of worship, part of gratitude, and part of justice.

Every year, the Church walks us through Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, the feasts of the saints, the martyrs, and the great mysteries of our salvation. She does this because memory forms the soul. Every feast day says something simple and powerful. This happened. This mattered.

God acted here. These people were faithful. Do not forget. At the center of our worship is an act of remembrance. At the Last Supper, our lord said, do this in remembrance of me.

He gave the church the Eucharist. He gave us the mass. He gave us the living memorial of his sacrifice, where the saving work of Christ is made present to us. So for Catholics, remembrance is not merely looking backward. Remembrance is how love remains faithful over time.

That is why tradition matters. Tradition, at its best, is gratitude across the ages. It is the humility to admit that we did not invent everything good we have received. We were born into gifts that other people guarded, built, taught, defended, and handed on. That is true in the church.

We received the scriptures, the creed, the sacraments, and prayers that were prayed long before us. And it is true in ordinary parish life too. Someone bought the land. Someone laid the bricks. Someone taught the children.

Someone kept the faith when it was inconvenient. Someone prayed here before we ever arrived. Most of us live inside the sacrifices of people we never met. That is also a good way for Catholics to think about our country. Patriotism is not worship of the nation.

God alone receives worship. But love of country can be a real and proper form of gratitude. Catholic tradition places this under the virtue of justice, because justice means giving others what they are due. We owe gratitude to those from whom we have received real goods, our parents, our families, our communities, and our country. We did not come from nowhere.

We inherited language, customs, laws, freedoms, churches, schools, neighborhoods, and stories. We inherited duties, too. A Catholic can love his country without making an idol of it. Our country can be loved, served, prayed for, and entrusted to God. That is not a distraction from faith.

When rightly ordered, it is one way gratitude becomes responsibility. This is why anniversaries matter. An anniversary asks, What have we received? Who sacrificed so that we could inherit it? What do we owe our children?

What must we hand on? Those are Catholic questions. The saints teach us this. The church gives us their feast days because holy memory gives birth to holy imitation. We remember the saints so that their fidelity can shape ours.

Memory should make us responsible. As America approaches two hundred and fifty years, Catholics can offer something quiet and strong. We can remember truthfully. We can give thanks humbly. We can pray for our country.

We can teach our children that the past is an inheritance and that an inheritance is meant to be received with gratitude and handed on with care. A people that forgets cannot give thanks, and a people that cannot give thanks eventually forgets how to love. So as this anniversary approaches, let us remember well. Let us thank God for what we have received. Let us honor the sacrifices that came before us, and let us ask for the grace to hand on what is good, faithful, and true.

That is a good way to love a country, and it is a very Catholic way to remember. You've been listening to the Saint John the Baptist Parish Podcast from Fort Lauderdale. Be sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify so you can be notified every time we release a new episode.