St. Pope John Paul’s II: America’s Responsibility

“O God, let all the nations praise you?” (Ps 67).

[At this time in history] – at once marked by unprecedented progress and by a tragic toll of human suffering – radical changes in world politics leave America with a heightened responsibility to be for the world an example of a genuinely free, democratic, just and humane society. There is a lesson for every powerful nation in the canticle from the Book of Revelation which we have recited. It actually refers to the song of freedom which Moses sang after he had led the people through the Red Sea, saving them from the wrath of the Pharaoh. The whole of salvation history has to be read in the perspective of that Exodus: God reveals himself in his actions to defend the humble of the earth and free the oppressed.

In the same way, in her Magnificat canticle, Mary, the Mother of the Redeemed, gives us the key to understanding of God’s intervention in human history when she says: the Lord “has scattered the proud in the conceit of their hearts .. . and exalted the lowly” (Lk 1:51-52). From salvation history we learn that power is responsibility: it is service, not privilege. Its exercise is morally justifiable when it is used for the good of all, when it is sensitive to the needs of the poor and defenseless.

There is another lesson here: God has given us a moral law to guide us and protect us from falling back into the slavery of sin and falsehood. We are not alone with our responsibility for the great gift of freedom. The Ten Commandments are the charter of true freedom, for individuals as well as for society as a whole.

America first proclaimed its independence on the basis of self-evident moral truths. America will remain a beacon of freedom for the world as long as it stands by those moral truths which are the very heart of its historical experience. And so America: If you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. If you want life, embrace the truth – the truth revealed by God.

In this way the praise of God, the language of heaven, will be ever on this people’s lips: “The Lord is God, the mighty . . . Come then, let us bow down and worship.” Amen.

1/27/99 John Paul II