As We Approach Our 250th

 

This week, the United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, “when our country claimed its place among the family of nations,” an occasion for giving thanks “for what has been achieved” and asking divine help “for the work that still remains.” [Collect for Independence Day, U.S. Roman Missal].

 

On Independence Day, we honor the great legacy left for us, often at great sacrifice, by generations past, most of them immigrants to this new land, to whom we remain linked in a great social compact, bounded to one another, both past and present, for the sake of the future. We celebrate our past history as a nation, our present life together, and our hope for our common future.

 

As Americans, we share in the benefits bequeathed us by our country’s founders, whose legacy we receive with respect and celebrate with gratitude. We are the heirs of immigrants who came to this country in response to its promises of economic opportunity and political freedom. For generations, Catholic immigrants have brought our faith to this land and enriched this society with a strong network of Catholic institutions, which have served Americans of all backgrounds, contributing a distinctly Catholic sensibility to the American experiment.

 

Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel [Matthew 10:37-42] reflect the high value in which hospitality and welcoming were held in his society, something also illustrated in our reading from the Book of Kings [2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a]. The Shunamite woman did more than just give Elisha a cup of cold water. She gave him dinner and furnished a room for him! In this, she foreshadowed the generous women in the Gospels, like Martha and Mary of Bethany, who offered hospitality to Jesus and his disciples, welcoming them into their home, serving ever since as models for the Church and the high spiritual value the Church has placed on hospitality and welcoming down through the centuries right up to our own time.

Having himself as a child been a political refugee from Herod’s terror, Jesus knew from personal experience the stress of leaving one’s homeland and facing an uncertain welcome in another land.

 

Inspired by Jesus’ own words in his parable about the Last Judgment, “I was a stranger and your welcomed me,” Saint Benedict’s Rule for monks famously prescribed that all guests who present themselves be welcomed as if they were Christ himself. Nor have hospitality and welcoming been confined to monasteries. When 17-year old Annie Moore crossed the threshold of the New World as the first immigrant to pass through the new Ellis Island immigration Facility on January 1, 1892, she was welcomed by, among others, Father Callahan of the Mission of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, who blessed her and gave her a silver coin, an expression of the historic role of the American Catholic community – itself throughout its history a community of immigrants – in providing hospitality and welcome  to generation after generation of new arrivals, in this land and nation of immigrants.

 

Annie Moore’s story – along with the stories of so many others, among them my own grandparents and the parents and grandparents of so many of us assembled here today – ought especially to impress themselves on our consciousness, both as Catholics and as Americans, as we prepare to celebrate our country’s 250th anniversary. For we have always been a Church of migrants and strangers, in this land and nation of immigrants, who have always been the face of our Church in this country – in our parishes and in our schools and in our other social ministries.

But, as we assemble today, as we do every Sunday, to profess our faith as migrants passing through this world en route to our final homeland, this week’s national holiday ought to remind us of our country’s complicated history: of our admirable civic and religious traditions of hospitality and welcome, worthy of comparison with the Shunamite woman and Elisha, but also of our past – and present - failures to live up to that challenge,

 

As this special anniversary approaches, we are all aware of the many difficult and divisive issues facing our country, along with the contentious arguments that command the news and dominate social media. In response to the pervasive political polarization of his own time, the founding pastor of this parish, Servant of God, Isaac Hecker (1819-1888) hoped that, as he said to Blessed Pope Pius IX, Catholicism could “act like oil on troubled waters” and so “sustain our institutions and enable our young country to realize its great destiny” [Letter, December 22, 1857, The Paulist Vocation, p. 46]. Today our faith challenges us to make Hecker’s hope a reality in response to the multiple challenges of our time.

 

Those challenges are many and do not admit easy or one-dimensional solutions. Disagreements are to be expected. As Catholics and as citizens, we are called to address our disagreements in a morally serious way that transcends simplistic sloganeering, emotional appeals to narrowly defined secular or religious identities, and the vilification of political opponents. As our American bishops reminded us over a decade ago: “Catholics may choose different ways to respond to compelling social problems, but we cannot differ on our moral obligation to help build a more just and peaceful world through morally acceptable means, so that the weak and vulnerable are protected and human rights and dignity are defended.” [USCCB, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (1915), 20].

 

The impending celebration of our 250th anniversary challenges us to a renewed pursuit of solidarity and mutual trust. As a society, we will always inevitably fall short of our own inclusive ideals and heroic ambitions, as just as certainly we will fall short of Jesus’ challenge of mutual hospitality to one another and to all we encounter. But by baptism into Christ, we are no longer permitted to be strangers to one another, for we have been brought beyond the ordinary human limitations of family, state, and society, and raised instead with Christ to live in newness of life [Romans 6:4], responding to one another and welcoming one another as we would never otherwise have known how to do or dared to have tried.

Homily for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, June 28, 2026.

Photo: Advertisement for the July 1 Semiquincentennial "Pilgrimage in Support of Immigrants" to Liberty Island.