Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XIV per Annum A

Sermon on the 250th Birthday of the USA

5 July 2026

This year’s significant Independence Day milestone provides an opportunity to connect our faith to the civic observance of the birthday of these United States of America. In the second year of the American Revolutionary War, on July 2, 1776, representatives of the thirteen American colonies of the kingdom of Great Britain voted to declare themselves independent from the British Crown, thus forming the United States of America. Two days later, on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed. For the 250th time since the signing, we have the joy of celebrating the birthday of the United States of America!

As believers in Jesus Christ in his holy Catholic Church, we have a vital contribution to make toward the strengthening of the fabric of our nation. A great way to celebrate our 250th is by recapturing an appreciation for the Christian faith and religious values that are very much at the foundation of the United States. We should not be timid about promoting religious and civic values. In fact, our faith holds patriotism to be a virtue, such that by giving to God His due we are also promoting the common good at one and the same time.

So many years after the founding, our national memory is at risk of failing. Together with that, technological advances and modern comfort have provided us the poisonous luxury of boutique ideologies that erode our nation’s founding principles. At the deeper root of the national crisis of identity, played out in unamerican political movements and social unrest, is the rejection of the role that religion and Christian faith have occupied in the life of this nation from its very founding. The rejection of God and religious values in the public square is our deepest crisis. However, that gives rise to the opportunity for our greatest contribution to the nation: namely, living the Catholic faith in full public witness. Do not believe those who champion the claim that the United States was not founded on Christian values. When you read about the dreams of those who voyaged across the ocean to establish the colonies, they (especially the Pilgrims and Puritans) express in biblical images that their journey was like a new exodus to come here to establish a city set upon a hill. Much post-modern scholarship seeks to cast doubt on the Christian status of the Founding Fathers as a means to erase our nation’s Christian principles. Yes, many of the Fou