What would you say about a nation that was upside down in its values: that valued things over people and profit over fairness; that was sexually out of control and religiously hypocritical; that found and insisted on every possible way to treat people as objects?

I’m not scolding. That’s actually the prophet Amos’ description of ancient Israel. Amos saw a land that was materially prosperous but morally and religiously bankrupt. What was meant to be a land of liberty — freedom in God — had turned into a land of license — doing whatever feels good and makes a profit.

If that sounds reminiscent of our national situation today, that’s not Amos’ fault. His prophetic message to ancient Israel sounded a warning we still need to hear and heed: “God sees that. God will not support you in it. Therefore, things will fall apart.”

But, paradoxically, those very similarities contain the seed of good news: If contemporary American woes look the same as ancient Israel’s woes, the solutions look the same, too! And so the Church gives us Psalm 19 and Psalm 119 as readings this week. Both psalms showed ancient Israel the path forward; they do the same for us.

Psalm 19 points toward the law of the Lord as the path to genuine flourishing. Psalm 119 is a comprehensive reflection on the law, literally walking through every letter of the Hebrew alphabet to show how attention to God’s law can — and needs to — permeate every aspect of our lives. We might say it was an ancient version of the fourth step of Alcoholics Anonymous: Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

That’s the path forward, both individually and nationally. We need to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of the ways, big and small, we have departed from the law of the Lord, and start returning to it.

Brothers and sisters, what a blessing it is to be in this land! We have liberties that others cannot count on and we can simply take for granted. But there’s the rub: In taking them for granted, we sometimes become sloppy about them. That’s when, like ancient Israel, our liberty devolves into license. And that’s when, like ancient Israel, we can — and need to — turn our blessing into a responsibility.

Do you remember the story about someone asking Benjamin Franklin what kind of government the Constitutional Convention had created? He responded: “A republic…if you can keep it.” The “if” seems more prominent today. But that, too, has an ancient parallel. Amos told ancient Israel: You can keep the land if you make a commitment to keeping the law of God. Similarly, as Catholics, we make our best contribution to national flourishing when we realize that our deepest citizenship is in heaven and commit to abiding by heavenly laws.

In a reading we hear this week, St. Paul says to the Ephesians: “You are fellow citizens with the holy ones.” When we commit to our citizenship in heaven, we become better citizens on earth. Heeding the prophet Amos, let’s commit to keeping the law of the Lord and helping our country to be a land of liberty rather than license.