Happy Birthday, America
June 28, 2026
On Saturday, July 4, we celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States of America. This is an important date as we reflect on the signing of the Declaration of Independence. America became a separate nation on the day we declared ourselves independent and free. We would have to fight a war with Britain to make the world understand that we were our own country, and we did.
When we think about the United States, the first thing that comes to mind is, I think, freedom. Our freedoms are what we are most proud of. That freedom was not universal. Native Americans and Blacks were excluded from that freedom, and women and white non-property owners were also denied the right to vote, and other rights. They had to fight to gain the freedom that landowning whites were guaranteed.
In our own time, the unborn are also denied the right to be born, so that they can claim the full set of rights guaranteed to us all. As has often been stated, “Freedom is not free.” We must all continue to fight for the rights of all whose rights are denied or are limited.
We celebrate in this beautiful land the ways in which we have led the world to see justice, religious liberty, freedom of speech, and all those rights in the Bill of Rights that are a part of our Constitution. We remember the cost of our freedoms and rights and the many men and women who have sacrificed themselves for the sake of their country and its people.
Our nation is in one of its more challenging times in our history. I hear people repeatedly saying that we are more divided than at any other time in that history. Remembering the Civil War, and having grown up in the 60s, with the war in Vietnam, and the Civil Rights struggle, I would personally disagree. But it is a difficult time.
I hope that in this year of honoring the birth of the United States, that we do some very simple things. First, read the Declaration of Independence. Then read the Constitution of the United States, especially the Bill of Rights. Read the Gettysburg address and President Lincoln’s second inaugural address. And finally, read Martin Luther King’s letter from the Birmingham jail.
And pray, pray, pray for the USA, that it will live up to its highest ideals, guaranteeing every one of us the unalienable rights of equality, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Happy birthday, America!
—Fr. Mike Comer
On Saturday, July 4, we celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States of America. This is an important date as we reflect on the signing of the Declaration of Independence. America became a separate nation on the day we declared ourselves independent and free. We would have to fight a war with Britain to make the world understand that we were our own country, and we did.
When we think about the United States, the first thing that comes to mind is, I think, freedom. Our freedoms are what we are most proud of. That freedom was not universal. Native Americans and Blacks were excluded from that freedom, and women and white non-property owners were also denied the right to vote, and other rights. They had to fight to gain the freedom that landowning whites were guaranteed.
In our own time, the unborn are also denied the right to be born, so that they can claim the full set of rights guaranteed to us all. As has often been stated, “Freedom is not free.” We must all continue to fight for the rights of all whose rights are denied or are limited.
We celebrate in this beautiful land the ways in which we have led the world to see justice, religious liberty, freedom of speech, and all those rights in the Bill of Rights that are a part of our Constitution. We remember the cost of our freedoms and rights and the many men and women who have sacrificed themselves for the sake of their country and its people.
Our nation is in one of its more challenging times in our history. I hear people repeatedly saying that we are more divided than at any other time in that history. Remembering the Civil War, and having grown up in the 60s, with the war in Vietnam, and the Civil Rights struggle, I would personally disagree. But it is a difficult time.
I hope that in this year of honoring the birth of the United States, that we do some very simple things. First, read the Declaration of Independence. Then read the Constitution of the United States, especially the Bill of Rights. Read the Gettysburg address and President Lincoln’s second inaugural address. And finally, read Martin Luther King’s letter from the Birmingham jail.
And pray, pray, pray for the USA, that it will live up to its highest ideals, guaranteeing every one of us the unalienable rights of equality, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Happy birthday, America!
—Fr. Mike Comer
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