The USA marks 250 years on the Fourth of July this year, a milestone wrapped in flags, fireworks, and a familiar founding story. I confess I find myself uneasy with how easily "America" and "the USA" get treated as the same word, the same place, the same story. America is far older than 250 years. It carried peoples, nations, and ways of life long before 1776, and even before 1492. Nations come and go, and a nation's birthday is not the world's feast. Sitting with that distinction, I keep returning to a prayer older than either the USA or América: the Magnificat, the song of a poor teenager from an occupied land, María of Nazareth (Lk 1:46-55).
La Virgen María was a poor woman among an oppressed people, her land bent under the weight of Roman imperial power. In her cotidiano as a marginalized woman in an occupied land with an uncertain future, she did two things before God. First, she praised Adonai, the God of her ancestors. Echoing Miriam, the revolutionary sister of Moses; overshadowed by the Holy Spirit as the Ark of the New Covenant, carrying her unborn child within her womb, she lifted her gaze to God and proclaimed:
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
For God looks on the lowliness of his servant,
henceforth all generations will call me blest.
The Almighty does great things for me,
and holy is his name.
She did not let the harshness of empire or her own poverty rob her of dignity or hope. Her body bore the weight of her time, but her soul sang the greatness of God. In this she was already faithful to the Reign her Son would proclaim; a reign measured in a very different register than empires, nations and anniversaries.
This fidelity to the reality of God’s Reign did not deny the sinful and oppressive reality in which she found herself and in which she would give birth to the Son of God. It led her to the second part of her prayer. In prayer, the pregnant Virgen María knew how to stand before God and to challenge him. With the tenderness of a strong woman, she issued a grateful demand:
God has mercy from age to age,
on those who fear him,
God shows might with his arm,
scattering the proud-hearted;
God casts the mighty from their thrones,
lifting up the lowly,
God fills the starving with good things,
sending the rich away empty.
God protects Israel, his servant,
remembering his mercy,
the mercy promised to our ancestors,
for Abraham and his children forever. (Beyond Piety, 52)
These are not gentle words. They are a lament that wants to know why mercy hasn't yet arrived in full and a demand that it does.
As the USA celebrates 250 years, María, daughter of an oppressed people, mother of a poor Son who would be executed by the empire of his day, gives voice to those still waiting at the margins of this nation's story: to the descendants of the people who were here long before any flag was planted, to migrants and refugees kept on the far side of walls and borders, to all whom a triumphant national narrative tends to leave out of the photograph.
And yet María does not only indict or condemn. She prays! She invites us to look into the eyes of God and find, even now, reason for hope; to refuse despair even as we refuse to look away from what is unjust.
María, madre de Jesús, invites and challenges us, on this anniversary, to hold both truths: gratitude for whatever genuine good these 250 years have brought, and an honest reckoning with a much older history this date does not capture. She calls us to scrutinize the maternal heart of God and to find the strength for a loving lucha. As mother of mercy, she calls us to a peaceful, persistent struggle for the rights of the poor, the marginalized, the forgotten, the migrants and refugees, and the original peoples of this land, whose story is far older than the nation now marking its quarter‑millennium. With her faith and courage, let us pray:
God, your mercy is from age to age on those who fear you,
Show might with your arm, scattering the proud-hearted;
Cast the mighty from their thrones, lifting up the lowly,
Fill the starving with good things, sending the rich away empty-handed.
Protect Israel and all nations, remembering your mercy,
the mercy promised to our ancestors and their children forever.
As we celebrate, let us consecrate the whole world to God, and the USA to the Immaculate Virgen María, Mother of Mercy and Justice. Let us trust that she who sang of thrones overturned and the hungry filled will hold this nation, and this much older land, in her maternal heart where, like every mother, she holds her Son long after his birth.