We Must Rediscover the Soul of America

I thought the pandemic had taught us something; that we had come out changed for the better, more concerned for the dignity and welfare of our neighbors. Have we already forgotten the lessons of those difficult days?

Back in 2020, my brothers and I were finishing the first year of our Franciscan formation when everything shut down. Washington, DC, like most of the world, became a shell of its former self. The streets were as still as the stoic monuments that adorned the capital, and life seemed to grind to an indefinite halt.

While many of our ministries were forced to stop providing services, people’s needs did not go away. Quite the opposite. With whole industries shut down and schools closed, communities were struggling more than ever to provide food for their children and a safe place for them to quarantine. One of those communities was Langley Park, Maryland, just a few miles from the capital, where the majority of residents were not US citizens. Without work and at high risk of infection due to close-quarters and poor living situations, the people of Langley Park were in great need of help and accompaniment.

That’s when the former principal of Franciscan International School, Toby Harkleroad, along with the then pastor of St. Camillus Parish, Br. Chris Posch, OFM, and many others came together to provide bagged lunches to children in need. While students no longer came to class in person, Franciscan International School continued receiving food for school lunches. Instead of letting that food go to waste, my friar classmates and I helped bag the food and distribute it to families in Langley Park.

This became such a big operation that the National Guard had to come in to assist us. My classmates trained the National Guard on how to distribute the food, and we worked alongside them for several weeks, serving this largely undocumented population together.

Shared Humanity

As a son of a Guardsman, I was honored to start my life as a friar by serving alongside men and women in the National Guard who made the same commitment and sacrifice as my father. It didn’t matter that the families we were serving came from Guatemala or another nation. Our service together went deeper than that. What mattered most was not a person’s papers, but our shared humanity, their right to respect and dignity, and our desire to work for the common good of all.

Pope Francis believed that the pandemic could be an opportunity for all of us to come out the other side changed for the better. He saw in the midst of the storm that God was calling us to something new; to reclaim what he calls a “culture of service.” In his book Let Us Dream, Pope Francis called everyone ”to open your eyes and let the suffering around you touch you, so that you hear the Spirit of God speaking to you from the margins.”

I worry that we have lost touch with the poor, marginalized, and suffering. I fear that their needs no longer move us, and that we are paralyzed to act and serve on their behalf. While the pandemic reminded us that we are all in this together, the moment we are in now as a nation is far removed from those days of service in Langley Park. Have we come out the other side better or worse?

Over the last few months, the Trump Administration has mobilized the National Guard in multiple cities across the US. This past summer, the president illegally federalized the National Guard in California and even sent Marines to respond to protests and assist ICE raids in Los Angeles. More recently, Trump sent the National Guard to DC, which, according to the president, had been “taken over by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals” as well as “drugged out maniacs and homeless people.”

The administration is taking advantage of our servicemen and servicewomen for its own political theater, using the force of the military against the poor and even US citizens. There was a time in America when the government would wage wars on societal ills, like poverty or drugs.

And regardless of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of such campaigns, we’ve grown tired of waging war on poverty and now wage war on the poor.

We’ve given up trying to resolve the drug crisis, and so now we scapegoat addicts and the mentally ill. I see it every day in my current ministry at St. Francis Inn in Kensington, where some people care more about the cleanliness of our street gutters and sidewalks than the health and well-being of the homeless that sleep there.

My Prayer for America

I fear for America. I also mourn what we have so clearly lost and are in desperate need of rediscovering: our soul. We have allowed our leaders to convince us that the only thing of value in life is strength, that peace is only possible through force.

Despite campaigning as an anti-war candidate, the president seems fixated on “lethality,” “violent effect,” and going on the offensive. This mentality dehumanizes and hurts our service members, who are more than mere machines of war. They’re our siblings and parents, our friends and relatives. They too deserve to have their humanity respected and kept intact.

Real peace is not achieved through brute force, but through what the US Army describes as “selfless service.” According to the Army’s webpage about their seven core values (lethality not being one of them), selfless service “is the commitment of each team member to go a little further, endure a little longer, and look a little closer to see how he or she can add to the effort.”

This is my prayer for our nation, that each of us goes a little further to the margins, peripheries, and abandoned places in our communities to touch the poor there. I pray that we endure a little longer in the service of our fellow human beings, helping to lighten the load of those who endure far too much injustice. And to look closer, both within ourselves and our communities, to search and to find God’s image in everyone we meet.

I pray that after we have done this, we may discover that lasting and true peace that can only be found when we give ourselves in selfless service to others.