When we last celebrated our nation’s birthday such grand scale, I was a lanky kid proudly walking with my Little League teammates in a bicentennial parade. Our team name P-O-L-I-C-E emblazoned on my jersey, a sea of flags waving, bands playing patriotic anthems everyone was singing while excitement grew throughout the day for the fireworks that culminated the festive celebration.
Now the 250th anniversary of the signing Declaration of Independence, I have served as a priest for more than 33 years, I am an uncle to nine nieces and nephews and I have dedicated my life to contributing to the open conversation of faith and culture that dared to be inaugurated, however imperfectly, 250 years ago.
Throughout the years, I have savored a front row seat to witness remarkable accomplishments and spine-tingling unity and also have experienced crushing lows arising from terrible betrayals of the original independence declaration.
My hope remains strong because the American story – our story – has never been about perfection but rather possibilities. Ours is an especially bold and daring narrative that began and continues to this moment as what many of us still rightly call, “the American dream.”
America happened when a particular people dared to pursue breathtaking possibilities. They boldly declared the impossible becoming possible, the unlikely will be made likely and the unimaginable actually will happening.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, our founders signed a document declaring that individual rights are invented neither by monarchs nor government, but originate from our Creator.
Our founders changed history with that single bold declaration.
They further declared that every human person is endowed with inherent dignity – intrinsic inestimable value – because our lives are gifts from God.
Acknowledging the shortcomings of our founders who themselves did not always live consistently the truths they enumerated in our Declaration of Independence, they set forth the great and noble struggle for genuine freedom.
Of course, so must we confess our own tragic failures to give all glory to God and champion the inherit dignity of all people.
Our history is the extraordinary adventure of courage and resolve, compassion and generosity, and also tragic failures. In our story also, as the central theme, is the capacity for the people to call themselves back to our highest ideals.
The AMERICAN PROPOSITION is fueled by its people determination to try, try again to live the truths that were declared in our origin.
Abraham Lincoln once referred to our nation as, “the last, best hope of earth.” He dared not speak these words arrogantly, but humbly; they were uttered as a clarion call. It now is for us to advance the possibilities for peoples by striving together for justice, by pursing together virtue, by championing together the dignity of every human person, especially those among us who are most vulnerable and in need of advocacy.
