by Sister Veronica of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, O. Carm.
When I was about four years old, I had an experience common to many American children. I dressed up like a pilgrim for Thanksgiving. For me, this was not just a game of make believe. It was a serious and solemn exercise.
I do not remember how old I was when I heard my parents, aunts, and uncles talking about how my great aunt, on my father’s side, had discovered that we were descended from Mayflower passenger John Howland. I was amazed to hear that he had fallen off the ship in a storm, and that if he hadn’t been rescued, I would not exist.
Over this past year, as I became aware of the upcoming centenary celebration of the Mayflower crossing, a question in my heart has been what it means to be patriotic. My lifelong study of history forbids any naive or triumphalist fanfare in the face of the bitter ambiguities lurking within every human story, threatening to taint the moments of heroism and tenderness. I cannot cease to mourn over the shattering of Christian unity that formed the backdrop for our nation’s origins. I cannot forget how fragile, fleeting, and rare have been the moments of true peace and brotherhood between European Americans and Native Americans. I must not lose my sense of keen compassion for my seafaring ancestors crowded below deck, advancing at the maddeningly slow pace of two miles an hour, only to arrive in a barren land, 200 miles north of their intended destination. Then, they endured the onset of a harsh winter that would claim the lives of half of their small community. Nonetheless, there is a genuine reason to celebrate.
Last September, upon learning that my ancestor John Howland—who would have 10 children and 88 grandchildren—was accompanied on the Mayflower not only by his future wife, 13 year-old Elizabeth Tilley, but also by her parents John Tilley and Joan Hurst, I revisited my genealogy. I found three more Mayflower ancestors! Francis Cooke was a wool comber, whose wife and children would join him in Plymouth in 1623. Stephen Hopkins had already been shipwrecked in Bermuda before this second voyage to the New World. His story was a source of Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest. His daughter Damaris would have been but a toddler on the Mayflower. Stephen’s wife, Elizabeth Fisher, gave birth to a son named Oceanus aboard the ship. In fact, Damaris died in Plymouth when she was still a child, but her parents had another daughter, also named Damaris, from whom I am descended.
Damaris intrigues me, though she would seem to be least significant. I have always loved the name Damaris and the story in Acts about her coming to the faith in response to St. Paul’s speech at the Areopogus in Athens. She heard him speak of an unknown God who “made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions...” (Acts 17:26). When Paul got to the point of announcing the Resurrection, his audience lost interest and dispersed, but Damaris stayed. She caught a glimpse of a life beyond this world, and this was enough to lead her to the fullness of faith.
Such a longing for something beyond is what is common to both pilgrims and pioneers. The American spirit is characterized as a desire to go ever further—even as far as the moon—to search for a new frontier. This expansiveness gives me hope for the people of this country. While our American ancestors may have been imperfect, our momentum towards the infinite may predispose us to undertake the ultimate pilgrimage from earth to heaven. Mary, under the title of the Immaculate Conception, is an apt patroness for the United States because her total receptivity to the newness of God’s ways images the soul of America. Yes, I am American, for I have always been a pilgrim.
When Damaris Hopkins crossed the great Atlantic, she was a tiny child. She became a founding mother of America, not through any virtue or decision of her own but by sheer providence. Some identify the landing of the Mayflower as the birth of our nation, but Isaiah asks, “Can a country be brought forth in one day, or a nation be born in a single moment?” (Isa. 66:8). Men and women may cooperate in the building up of a land and angels may also be employed, but the creation of a nation is an act of God. “All the nations You have made shall come and fall prostrate before You and glorify Your name, O Lord” (Ps. 86:9).