‘Parents and country are the closest sources of our existence,’ says Aquinas, ‘and everyone is indebted first of all under God to both.’
I was raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a “melting pot” outside of Detroit. On the school bus each morning, I sat with friends from different backgrounds. At school, I caught up with my best friends Catherine, a French girl with dual citizenship, and Unnur, a kind, intelligent immigrant from Iceland. I worked at a café run by a devout Greek Orthodox family; studied Spanish under fabulous Argentinian teachers; and snacked on Dutch banketstaaf, Middle Eastern za’atar, and Egyptian pancakes. You could say, as far as cultural enrichment goes, I was set.
I’m 45, and I’ve never gone without a good meal, a warm bed or clean water. I had a solid education and the chance to enjoy America’s beauty. Most importantly, I had a decent church to go to every Sunday of my life (except during COVID).
I have never lived under a dictator or through famine or war. I have never been harassed by soldiers when going out in public (like my Palestinian friend who grew up in Jerusalem was). I have reliable mail service, the latest gadgets, and the best of books, movies, clothing and art at my fingertips. I am deeply, abundantly blessed. I am not saying I haven’t had my fair share of sufferings and crosses, but by God’s grace and America’s affluence, I have made it through every time. God let me live in this beloved country, and many days, I don’t even know why he thought I deserved it.
I wish I could say it was true that most people in the world felt this way about their homeland, but it isn’t. It wasn’t true for my great, great, great uncle, who left the Netherlands and came to America so that he could live out his faith better and found Holland, Michigan, a city full of Christian churches (and Hope College as well).
And it wasn’t true for my father, which is why he immigrated to America, land of the free and home of the brave. Dad came to California nearly penniless at age 24 — a B-student with a degree from a small Dutch technical school — and worked his way to become a highly successful and generous inventor, investor, engineer and businessman.
He had lived through World War II under the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands. He had suffered everything from boils on his flesh from starvation to being terrorized by Nazi soldiers who camped across the street from his home for years. He had seen his beloved country dismantled in the war’s aftermath by socialistic atheism. He knew there was a better life out there for himself and his future family, and indeed there was — and he found it. It took a tremendous amount of courage and a heroic spirit, but he did it. He immigrated to this country, earned citizenship, worked extremely hard, and contributed to the strength and promise of America.
No matter which country we call home, we are called to love it and fight for it wholeheartedly. For God’s mercifully providential, mysterious reasons, he chose each of us to live in this time, in this country.
One way to love our country is to educate ourselves about what it means to be authentic patriots. Derived from patria, which means “country” in Latin, patriotism implies a profound affection for one’s native land, for wishing to contribute to its common good, and for accepting certain obligations as its citizens.
For those of us who are blessed to be parents, patriotism means nurturing a love for our country in the midst of family life. By giving a firm foundation to our children and investing in them, we are ultimately loving our country, because they are its hope and its future. Parenthood is far too underrated these days — mothers and fathers are people of matchless influence. The time and effort we put into bonding with our children and forming their minds and souls to serve God’s Kingdom will reap more bountiful fruit than we can fathom, for our country and far beyond.
As American Catholic parents, we are soldiers who are fighting not only for the Church Militant, but for America, that it may remain the land of the free and home of the brave. By giving our children a solid Catholic education, whether through Catholic schooling or homeschooling, we are empowering Holy Mother the Church and making her future in our nation all the more luminous. As Dr. Mary Kay Clark writes in Catholic Homeschooling:
For those of us who love our country and want to restore it to Christ, we see our homeschooling family as a tool to help our nation grow in the love of God. Our Catholic homeschooling families are training leaders dedicated to Christian moral values, who will help return our nation to Christ. Our homeschooling families, now and in the future, will help our nation to find itself, to understand its purpose, to seek Christian heroes, and to seek direction from Christian precepts.
The painstaking efforts parents make to educate their children in the good, the true and the beautiful — whether by drowning in parish school bills or tripping over a small truckload of morally uplifting books in our living room — stand for something truly great. They mean that we, as parents, are laying down our lives not only for the sake of heaven, but also for our beloved country.
With all this in mind, now may be the perfect time to start saying the Pledge of Allegiance with our children often, pray for our nation daily, and sing long-cherished patriotic hymns. It’s high time to love our good God and our country.
Happy Independence Day, and God bless America!
