Memorial Day
May their sacrifice inspire us to carry our cross.
Imagine the country we would be if on Memorial Day we remembered, not the valor of our soldiers, but the cowardice of those who defected or abandoned their post because of money, family, or status. Aren’t these goods: family, money, and status, the very things our foreign enemies use to entice people to betray their country?
“We just have to lay low and let this blow over.”
“Gotta take care of your family, you know what I mean?”
“I mean, sometimes you gotta work with the bad guys in order to get by. Don’t get me wrong, I think they are wrong, but what do you expect me to do?”
These are not the words of courageous men and women who died for their country. They are the words of citizens who are too afraid to stand for the truth in their schools, churches, or jobs.
Thankfully, some still understand, however shallow that understanding may be, that freedom isn’t free; that someone has to die so that we might live. This is a fundamental aspect of reality, as well as the basis for the possibility of a right relationship with God. Our life is ultimately indebted to the one who purchased us with his blood. Despite this fact, we are still free to choose: God or the world. Similarly, our freedom has been purchased by the blood of soldiers, and it is ultimately our choice whether we use it for ourselves or for God. The cliché, “freedom isn’t free” may be overused, but so are Journey songs. And that doesn’t stop us from playing “Don’t Stop Believin’”!
Memorial Day reminds us of the men and women who gave their lives so that we could use ours, not for ourselves, but for the common good. Maybe some were afraid, others may not have wanted to be there, some might have felt they got the short end of the stick, but none of these very human factors deterred them from serving their country and paying the ultimate price.
The main error with Americans today is that they are only willing to sacrifice their own comforts if it will lead to their own benefit. It is this attitude that leads many to compromise their faith in their work, their church, and their families (c.f. Matt. 10:34-36). In short, when we are asked to take a stand we ask “What’s in it for me?” But without sacrifice, truth, goodness, and beauty become scarce. When people stop making sacrifices, darkness covers the land. Evil is enthroned and men do its bidding in public while cursing it in private.
When a soldier dies for our freedom, they did not do this merely for you to have a great house, job, and white picket fence. The fate of a nation is bound up in the lives of both citizen and soldier. We the citizens are not supposed to be spectators of some great military accomplishments. We play a supporting role for “Team America”. The citizen and soldier are members of the same team. When soldiers pay the ultimate price, they pass the baton their lives carried around the track to us so that we might continue the race they started. Once we receive the baton, it’s our duty to ask what sacrifices we must make so that their sacrifice is not in vain.
Memorial Day reminds us that our political inheritance comes at great cost. But today citizens exchange this inheritance, purchased with the lives of soldiers, for comfort of a cushy job, nice home, and kids who want a sex change. Nice homes and nice jobs are certainly part of the freedom we’ve inherited, but we cannot see them as the ultimate purpose for which our countrymen died.
Americans today are like the prodigal son. We have a sense of entitlement. We continue to ask men and women to enlist and risk their lives to die for a country that’s aborting babies, cutting off the genitals of children, opening the border, and promoting the sexualization of children in nearly every sphere of society. We ask them to risk their lives for a country that promotes evil while keeping our heads down in our cubicles, as if our workplaces were under a constant barrage of bullets and artillery fire. We believe that our freedoms will always be bought by someone else; that as long as we keep sacrificing our sons and daughters to the gods of freedom, we will still be able to have a normal and sensible country. “Someone else will serve in the trenches so that I can serve in the cubicle, put pronouns in my bio, apologize for my Christian faith, and work for a company that funds the organizations that would like to put my priest or pastor in jail.” We delude ourselves into thinking that as long as soldiers are enlisting, which they are not, then we will still have a great country that prospers both financially and morally.
But a different story is emerging. As military recruiting hits record lows, moral insanity abounds. We are entering the metaphorical pig pen of the political prodigal son. We are coming to a point where the moral and political whores that we have been paying with our inheritance, bought by the fallen, are calling our debts. The debt they are calling can only be satisfied with a sacrifice. We must either take up our cross and follow Christ to Golgotha, where those who lose their life will ultimately find it, or succumb to the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the Devil and give the debtors our souls in exchange for a comfortable and enjoyable life. “Eat, drink, and be merry,” they say, “for your soul is ours”.
Regardless of when Christ comes back, all people, whether soldier or citizen, will be required to make the choice of God or the World: will I follow Christ to Golgotha, or will I defect? We do not know the day or the hour that Christ will call us to die, but if we do not prepare our hearts to echo Our Lady’s words at the Annunciation, “Let it be done to me according to your will”, then we will ultimately find ourselves warmed by the fires of Hell while denying before the world that we ever knew him. Christ have mercy, for we know not what we do.
The soldiers of America have defended us successfully against enemies, both foreign and domestic, but they were never capable of defending us from the enemy within: mainly, ourselves and our propensity to serve ourselves rather than the common good. If men and women are going to die, be maimed, and suffer PTSD so you can do what is right, then just as it is their duty to lay down their life for this country, then it is our duty to take the pay cut for a job that furthers your values more than it furthers your wallet. It’s your duty to sacrifice your athletic career to ensure that thousands more girls have a real athletic career. It’s our duty to stand up to the medical establishment and call out the insanity of sterilizing and butchering children who believes they were born in the wrong body.
If it is the duty of a soldier to be willing to lay down his life for your constitution, then its at least reasonable to expect some citizens to sacrifice their professional lives to preserve the moral and Christian foundation necessary for future generations to flourish. If we don’t take the harder political, economic, and moral roads God places in front of us, then the sacrifices we remember on Memorial Day will be in vain.
While soldiers fight with bullets and bombs, the citizens they defend are in a different battle. It is not a battle merely against flesh and blood, but “against the principalities of darkness”. Don’t believe me? Just follow
to see how demonic the battle is getting.This Memorial Day, reflect on the reality that your professional sacrifice, though intimidating, is not the equivalent of losing your life on the battlefield. If we really respect the sacrifices Memorial Day commemorates, then we will have to do our part, die to self and trust God to carry us through whatever storm he calls us to, including the ones that we don’t make it out of.
May the souls of the faithfully departed, through the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, Rest in Peace.
Thank you for your sacrifice.