Patriotism is a love for everything to do with our native land: its history, its traditions, its language, its natural features. It is a love which extends also to the works of our compatriots and the fruits of their genius. Every danger that threatens the overall good of our native land becomes an occasion to demonstrate this love…I believe that the same could be said of every country and every nation in Europe and throughout the world. (John Paul II, Memory and Identity, 65-66)
The Greater Social Context
Our personalities do not develop in a vacuum and our journey of faith doesn’t either. Instead, we have a greater social context in which God has situated us and wants us to work in it and for it as long as we do it with Him and for Him. He wants us to follow him in that greater social backdrop that is our society and its related cultures and values. Our nation and the various cultures and values associated with it are an essential part of that social backdrop; therefore, it is imperative for all Christians to constantly examine how this context has affected their understanding of community. In other words, Christians need to regularly revisit whether the secular values that dominate mainstream cultures have taken over the Christian values in their understanding of the society as a whole.
I am writing from the Dominican Republic today and my short stay in this country has already made me feel at home. I did not know why, because this is my first visit to this country and there is nothing in my life that ties me back to this area of the world. I have explored the question, because we have exhaustively discussed the meaning of patriotism as well as nationalism on this blog.
For the first time in over eight years since I left Venezuela, I have experienced once again the things that I used to take for granted before. Here I have seen the large and lush mango trees and the fruit that my family and I used to love and eat frequently. I have also seen the large coconut trees that as kids we used to throw rocks at so we could get the coconuts down and drink the water. I have also seen the “flamboyán” tree with its beautiful and abundant orange flowers that as children we used to wear as headpieces when we were playing the “princess” game. I have also tasted all the delicious variety juices made with the tropical fruits I enjoyed for so many years. On the other hand, I have seen children in their pre-teen years working as any other adult and I am reminded of how rare it can be for a child in Venezuela to live the childhood I now look back to so nostalgically and almost romantically. At the same time, I have to only open the curtain of my comfortable hotel room to see the backyard of a couple of houses that say nothing but destitution and poverty as a result of an economy highly affected by unemployment and an ever-growing informal sector.
Where am I going with all this? That the development of my personality, the core of who I really am, has been dictated by my family and the values associated with it, but not isolated from the social elements that surrounded me while growing up. For example, I grew up playing in the outdoors and nature was the limit to the creativity of our games. This is in part why I have developed overtime a concern for the earth’s resources, because I want my own children and children everywhere to experience the gifts of the earth firsthand and enjoy them the same way I did. Another example is my concern for children in need has flourished as a result of the internal conflict I experienced while growing up; every time that I asked myself without a concrete answer: “Why do I have ‘such and such’ and this child does not?” That ‘such and such’ being either family or food or, in the worst cases, dignity or innocence. This is not to say, nonetheless, that a Christian has to absolutely experience poverty in some fashion in order to feel his/her call to serve the most vulnerable.
I am very glad for the good memories and for all those different components of the Venezuelan culture that have contributed to the essence of my being. But now, I live very far away from the land where I “buried my heart” when I left it eight years ago as the “Mi Cuba” song goes… So how does the immigrant deal with this question… with this nostalgia? How does one assimilate in a new land?
Memory
One has to always remember where one came from and carry with himself the good values learned from his land to the new land and also shed the bad ones and leave them behind. As Christians and as migrants, we also know that Christ has not isolated himself to a time or a place and that His followers go wherever the journey takes them… and accept the challenge with joy. I, for instance, now feel Southwest Louisiana as my second homeland, because of the many years I spent there and the many wonderful people I met that affected my life and my faith journey in countless ways. So my homeland is no longer just one, but two, or even more as I migrate from place to place encountering Christ in the relationships I build every day of my life.
However, these questions about nostalgia of times and places that have passed do not only apply to migrants, but also to those who remain in their own city, state, or nation for the rest of their lives, because countries are dominated by a variety of cultures that often encounter themselves opposing each other. As Christians, we have to be the memory and the preservers of the good and fundamental values within our society just as the early Christians were the preservers of the good values after the fall of the Roman Empire. We need to be the constant living reminders of where we all come from and of how our humanity, by its nature, can only point to the One and Living God: Jesus Christ. This concept of memory, in my opinion, also falls into the realm of patriotism, because patriotism cannot exist without a community. In other words, patriotism is the expression of solidarity with a community of people with whom we share our land and traditions. Therefore, as a community we remember our origins and our values and work together to preserve them as long as those same values are in perfect alignment with the values that should exist within a Christian community: generosity, preferential option for the poor, solidarity, and a constant effort to achieve the common good.
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