When my parents received their visiting visas to the United States to attend my ordination in May 2006, their excitement traveled clearly across the telephone line from China. It was their first journey outside their homeland, and the anticipation on both sides of the Pacific was palpable. On the day of their arrival, I drove to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago to receive them. Five years had passed since we last saw one another, and none of us could conceal the emotion of that reunion.
After our initial embrace and greetings, we began walking toward the exit. I noticed something different about my mother immediately. She was not simply walk-ing, and she was marching with head lifted, arms swinging, her stride long and purposeful. I assumed it was the exhilaration of arrival. Then, stepping through the airport doors into the open air, she stopped, drew a long, slow breath, and ex-claimed: “Finally, I can breathe the air of freedom.”
Her words startled me. In that moment, I found myself reflecting on the whole of her religious life in China. Her whole life was shaped by suppression, restriction, and quiet perseverance under persecution. She had never known what it meant to practice her faith without constraint. For her, this brief visit to her son in America was nothing less than a pilgrimage into the freedom she had longed for her entire life.
She remained in the United States for forty-five days, and she embraced every moment with the reverence of someone who understood, in her bones, what
freedom truly costs. She sought out the natural beauty of the country wherever we traveled — Chicago, South Bend, Los Angeles, San Francisco — and in each city, she asked me to take her to the great churches. She knelt and prayed in each one with quiet, unhurried devotion. When she entered the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at the University of Notre Dame and beheld its beauty, she began to sing praise to God, her voice rising to fill the vaulted space. The other visitors turned and looked at her with puzzled expressions. Had they known her story, they would have understood.
Witnessing my mother’s joy gave me pause to consider blessings I had long taken for granted: the freedom to pursue an education, to study in a seminary, to be ordained as a priest openly — with my parents present. The freedom to pray, to attend Mass, and to receive the Lord in the Eucharist on any day, at any hour, without fear. Her story is more than a personal memory. It is a living parable of what this nation, at its best, is called to be — a place where the freedom God has written into every human heart is protected, honored, and permitted to sing.
Freedom, grounded in human dignity, is the foundational right upon which authentic peace and justice are built. As Saint Paul reminds us, “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1). The Declaration of Independence echoes this conviction: “All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” The Founding Fathers envisioned a nation in which human dignity flows from the Creator, liberty is safeguarded by law, government is accountable to moral truth, and citizens are formed in virtue and responsibility. These ideals find their deepest roots in the biblical vision of humanity created in the image of God and called to live in justice, freedom, and charity toward one another.
As this nation prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its founding, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has undertaken the consecration of the country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus — an act of profound trust. Christ calls to those who labor and are burdened, offering rest and renewal. He extends that same invitation to nations. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Ps 33:12), for the true strength of any people lies not in its wealth, its military power, or its institutions alone, but in its fidelity to God’s truth, its pursuit of justice, and its care for every human person.
At the end of her forty-five days, as my mother prepared to return to China, she offered a simple farewell judgment: “America is great, and Americans are very kind.” May we prove worthy of that witness. May we continue to heed the Lord’s ancient summons: “Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (Is 1:17) — so that this nation may remain, for all the world to see, a city set upon a hill.
- Fr. Peter Zhai, SVD