By Fr. Frederick Edlefsen

En route to New Orleans from Runway 1, I enjoy gazing from my window seat over the landscapes of America’s southeast. Flying over NoVa neighborhoods and then over UVA’s familiar campus and the Appalachian Mountains – which become more dramatic in the Smokies – I contemplate all this and the towns and winding roads that lead to the reservoirs and farms of red clay country in the Tennessee Valley. I occasionally recognize landmarks from road trips taken years ago, including an I-59 median south of Meridian, Mississippi (of childhood memory) that splits widely among southern pines and forms a woodland between the northbound and southbound lanes, giving the sensation that there’s no traffic going the opposite direction. Back in the 1970s, even Meridian had DC-9 jet service on Southern Airways – the “Aristocrat of the South.”

Sentiments and memories emerge, like prayers, when the plane approaches the Gulf of Mexico, banking west over Pascagoula, Biloxi, and Bay St. Louis, with a view of the Chandeleur Islands from the left window before passing over Lake Pontchartrain and then banking a hairpin left over swamps to land in New Orleans. Memories of landscapes and the people encountered over my lifetime make my heart grateful. I remember once thinking, while looking out an airplane’s window: “I love my country.” I felt grateful to God for gifting me with this land and its people.

We don’t choose our country. It is a gift of Providence. Patriotism should not be an occasion of bravado and boasting. On the contrary, the gift of our country should humble us and make us kinder and more generous to all people of goodwill.

This is authentic patriotism. It is perfected through the Holy Spirit's Gift of Piety, which gives us a childlike affection and gratitude to God. It produces an interior enlightenment that makes us see the best of every culture and the beauty of every “nation and race, and language and people” (Revelation 14:6) as a gift for us and for all. Piety’s supernatural light inspires us to use the gifts we have received for the good of others. Piety is a healing balm, perfecting the virtue of Justice and blossoming in the Beatitude, “Blessed are the gentle of heart, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).

More Independence Day reflections next weekend.