Today, Melania and I join in prayer with Catholic Bishops gathered in Orlando, Florida, as they consecrate the United States of America to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the occasion of our 250th year of American Independence-a powerful moment in our national story and a poignant reminder that America has always been guided by the loving hand of God.
Even in the centuries before the United States was conceived in nationhood, America was a land of prayer, a place of miracles, and home to some of the most faithful and devoted Christians to ever live. From the heroic bands of Christian missionaries, settlers, and explorers who tamed the unknown to spread the Gospel to the priests, chaplains, and churchgoers who forged our spirit in every generation since, the love of Jesus Christ has stood at the center of our identity and way of life.
Inspired by this proud birthright of faith, just years after the end of the Revolutionary War, Bishop John Carroll-the first Catholic bishop in the United States and cousin of Catholic Founding Father Charles Carroll-consecrated our young Republic to Mary, the Mother of God. Today, this grand legacy of faith in America reaches yet another historic milestone as America's Catholic Bishops consecrate our Nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, during which they will prayerfully "celebrate the abundant gifts" that God has "given this nation, founded on the self-evident truths that our Creator has endowed all people with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." And following today's consecration, on June 12, Christians in the United States and around the world will celebrate the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, a joyful celebration of God's boundless love for all His creation.
This year's Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus also fittingly marks the anniversary of one of the most momentous days in Western civilization's long twilight struggle against atheistic communism. On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan delivered his historic address at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, in which he famously implored Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."
Toward the end of his remarks, President Reagan identified what he called "the most fundamental distinction of all between East and West: The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship."
President Reagan recounted the construction by the communist East German government of a mighty television tower in the 1960s. "Virtually ever since," Reagan said, "the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower's one major flaw, treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere, that sphere that towers over all Berlin, the light makes the sign of the cross. There in Berlin, like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed."
On that very day, just over 200 miles away, Pope Saint John Paul II, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, was speaking in his native Poland. On the Westerplatte peninsula, the place where, in an extraordinary display of heroic virtue, an isolated force of around 200 Polish warriors held out for 7 days against approximately 4,000 German troops attacking from sea, land, and air in the opening days of World War II, the Pope challenged a gathering of Polish youth: "Each of you, young friends, also finds your own 'Westerplatte' in life. A set of tasks that must be undertaken and fulfilled. A just cause that you cannot simply fail to fight for. A duty, an obligation, from which you cannot shirk. You cannot 'desert.' Finally-a certain order of truths and values that must be 'upheld' and 'defended,' just as at Westerplatte, within oneself and around oneself. Yes, defended-for oneself and for others."
Pope Saint John Paul II closed by quoting the words of a Polish martyr. "More horrifying than a defeat of arms is the defeat of the human spirit."
Thanks to the moral leadership of President Reagan and Pope Saint John Paul II, the tireless work and determination of free men and women around the world, and the moral witness of millions who endured prolonged suffering within the Captive Nations, the godless forces of Soviet communism were vanquished-and the human spirit triumphed.
Today, nearly four decades later, our Nation and our culture confront a new set of menacing ideologies seeking once again to cast God out from our society. But today, as Catholic Bishops consecrate the United States of America to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in this 250th year of our Independence, we recommit ourselves, like President Reagan and Pope Saint John Paul II, to defending our spiritual identity and great civilizational inheritance. Above all, we pray that America will continue for the next 250 years, and beyond, to be a land of faith, a country of miracles, and a light and glory to all nations.
