We call Saint Thomas the “Angelic Doctor” for his spiritual wisdom and superhuman self-control. His teaching reaches to the very heights of heavenly contemplation. Even so, this spiritual man thinks you should sing “God Bless America,” launch a barrage of fireworks, and eat a big ol’ red, white, and blue popsicle today!

“Are you serious?” you ask. “Dead serious,” I reply.

Piety toward the homeland is a duty of every citizen. We are to honor our country and love it like a child loves his parents. Whether or not our nation provided and continues to provide for our good in a spirit of prudence, love, and godliness, our homeland has given us foundational gifts—material goods, law, order, and peace. The duty of honor hardly concerns whether we got the president, the representative, the policy we wanted. These can be added reasons to honor our nation, much as we can love our parents as friends as we grow older; however, the foundation for our piety will always be the primary goods given by our nation, just as with our parents. This means we can always honor our country, regardless of the state of things in our nation.

We often think of honor as something mental or spiritual. Here, St. Thomas has a very important point: the act of honor is something bodily and external. Honor involves bearing witness to the excellence of a person or thing. Although our hearts bear witness before God, we are social creatures and must bear witness before others as well. To show honor before men, who cannot see our hearts, we have to bear witness in an external, bodily way. We show honor before others “either by words, as when one proclaims another’s excellence by word of mouth, or by deeds, for instance by bowing, saluting, and so forth, or by external things, as by offering gifts, erecting statues, and the like” (ST II-II, q. 103, a. 1).

What does this mean for us? We are obliged to honor our nation, and the only proper way is by external signs. These signs, St. Thomas says, are either words, deeds, or things. To celebrate the birth of our nation most properly, we should employ each of these.

In our show of honor, we should embrace our national customs. The words, deeds, and things that Americans customarily use are best for this purpose, for two reasons. First, customary acts bear witness before others more effectively, since they are easily interpreted. Everyone knows what you’re doing if you shoot fireworks on the Fourth of July. Second, customary acts allow us to show our piety for our nation in a unified way, allowing for grand displays of patriotism and signifying that our homeland’s excellence is found precisely in the basic goods it gives all Americans: life, order, and peace.

So today, turn up your American spirit, regardless of the current state of our political life. The primary motive for honoring our country is that we were born and nourished in this land, not that our polity finds our approval. Bear witness to our homeland’s goodness by words, as you sing your heart out to “God Bless America.” Bear witness by deeds, as you launch a salvo of fireworks in the backyard. And bear witness by things, as you eat a popsicle sporting Old Glory’s red, white, and blue. This is how Americans show honor for our homeland, and St. Thomas approves!

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Photo by Chaojie Ni on Unsplash