Sunday, when I mentioned to Fr. Anthony that I’d be off today, and would attend this mass, he asked me if I’d like to preach, because he thought it more appropriate that an American preach on the Fourth of July.

I was touched, but I almost think it would actually be more appropriate for Fr. Anthony to preach. He has the advantage of seeing our country with fresh eyes. And, as some of you know, this will be his last Fourth of July with us. He’s leaving next month, to return to the Czech Republic. He will be celebrating THEIR independence day next year. (Which I’m sure will be wonderful, even though they don’t have the Macy’s fireworks…)

But he got me to thinking: despite differences of language or nationality, are we really all that different? What we celebrate today is what all people strive for, what every heart hungers for. Freedom. That is a sentiment every one knows — Fr. Anthony, especially. He spent much of his life behind the Iron Curtain, under communist rule. We who have enjoyed freedom our whole lives perhaps can’t appreciate it the way he does, the way anyone does, who has had freedom limited or even taken away.

Yesterday, the British journalist Alan Johnston was freed in Gaza after 16 weeks of being held captive by kidnappers. He described his captivity this way: “It was really grim,” he said, “like being buried alive. Countless times I dreamed of being free.”

How many people around the world share the same dream, in different ways, in different circumstances? Captives of ideologies, or causes. But we in America are living that dream. We are truly blessed.

This morning, we come to God in thanksgiving and in joy, celebrating the life of freedom we have been given in this country.

If you talk with Fr. Anthony, you will hear him use two phrases again and again, to describe a variety of things: “Very nice.” And “amazing.” I think this priest from the Czech Republic understands what America is about better than he realizes. Those words could describe our country – and I can’t put it more eloquently than that.

God has blessed America. Let us thank him for giving us this land, and this freedom. Because it is all “very nice.” And it is all “amazing.”