Catholic Sat@CatholicSat
One of the all time great Pope Francis moments:
“If you do not love your country, I do not believe that you will be able to love Jesus and love God.”
The people cheering give me chills.
"Love for one’s country is love for a mother, we call her “Mother Land”, because we are…
This is a timeless message so poorly understood. Love your country. You don’t have to support its politicians, you don’t have to agree with the whole of its history, but it is what you have. How can you make your country better? How can you help your people?
Hating your country because of its historical wrongs or because of its politicians is an instrument of surrender, a declaration that your country is now fully equated with and indistinguishable from its diseases. It is to give up on trying to better your country, on the hard work that entails.
It is nothing more than abandon pure and simple. It is a form of resignation. No longer will you struggle to take the country back, because the country is now an extension of that which you hate. It can no longer be separated from that; no reform allowed, no correction.
When you love your country you love its peoples, its land, its languages, its animals, its plants. It goes beyond just country the flag, country the state, country the ideology. It is country the living being, country the opportunity, country the sustenance. Country the you!
I love Canada. Do I agree with its government? Very rarely. Do I love its weather? Perhaps in October, and April–May. Am I a great beneficiary of its economy? Not really. But do I like the people, the land, the language, the life within? Of course, and so I love Canada.
Some pedantics would go to say that I am using a wrong name here. I disagree, but not for the reason you think. I love the Canada of the now, but I don’t know about the Canada of the past. I haven’t lived there. I’ve been born this century. I can only love what I have now.
And what I have now is the Canada of the now, simply called Canada. In 1837 perhaps I would have said that I loved Bas-Canada. In the 1700s it would have been Nouvelle-France. In the 1500s and earlier perhaps I would have said that I loved Tiohtià:ke.
But I don’t know what these lands were. Of course, I’ve heard their history, but I haven’t been there. I can have opinions on them, but they’re just that: ideals in the mind. I find it callous to love an ideal over what’s around me right now. I’d rather work with the now.