Memorial Day: A Return to Hallowed Ground

Memorial Day: A Return to Hallowed Ground

by Andrew J. Zwerneman

On a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach, Americans created the Normandy Cemetery and Memorial in honor of those who died in the D-Day landings of 1944, the largest amphibious invasion in all of history. The memorial is flanked by a semicircular limestone colonnade. Carved on the lintel is an inscription that captures the enduring significance of the place, the events that surrounded it, and the Americans who were at the center of it all:

THIS EMBATTLED SHORE, PORTAL OF FREEDOM,
IS FOREVER HALLOWED BY THE IDEALS, THE VALOR AND
THE SACRIFICES OF OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN.

In memorializing personal sacrifice, Americans represent the transcendent order of freedom. At Normandy the fallen soldiers created a “portal of freedom” for their countrymen and their European neighbors. They died so that others might be free from the tyranny and war fomented by Nazi Germany. American and European freedom, in other words, was dependent on their sacrifices. Given freely, their sacrifices carried others to freedom.

Further still, as signified on the gravestones marked by Stars of David and Roman Crosses at Normandy and elsewhere in the global network of American military cemeteries, the fallen typically gave their lives from within a personal order by which they reconciled their lives to God. The form of that relationship does not originate in military service; it originates in God’s intervention in the past. He freed us first. By his liberating hand, God ordered our lives to freedom—in Egypt, then in Israel. In that light, if we say that the ideals, valor, and sacrifice of the fallen are the measure of us all, God is their measure and thus, ours as well.  

Some might object to tying public service to religion, either out of a repudiation of religion, especially Judaism and Christianity, or by a reactionary separation of religion from politics. The fact is, however, no society is founded on atheism; religion lies at the foundation of every society. The further fact is, America’s religious foundations are Jewish and Christian. And while no public service is equivalent to the mystical bond between a believer and God, the spiritual bonds forged through remembrance of God provide necessary bearings for how we exercise our own responsibilities as citizens. 

Under history, in other words, ordered freedom works not only by the representation evident in our political and legal structures—as in, representative government—it works when citizens reconcile that order to its transcendent origins in the order established by God: the civic law to the natural law, the protection of human dignity to the biblical image of our humanity, and the cultivation of rights to human conscience where God alone is privy to the innermost speech of any of us. That is not to claim that America is or ought to be a theocracy. It is to claim that the ultimate measure of our freedom is the freedom God has given us.

If, in turn, ordered freedom has a societal face—familial, ecclesial, and political— it depends on the personal sacrifice of individuals on whom the freedom of the respective community depends. To put this another way, the soldier who sacrificed his life calls to memory for us that freedom is not ultimately a matter of individualism but of individual freedom exercised for the freedom of others. This is true for any of us: spouses for each other and for their children, teachers for their students, doctors and nurses for their patients, and immigrants and trailblazers who carve out a life of freedom for those that follow them. All of us fulfill our most fundamental calling through spending our lives for others.

We can see that personal sacrifice is no mere topic of history, even as we memorialize certain valorous examples; it is a way of life under history, where history was first forged by the eternal God who intervened in time. Through the first Exodus, then the second, in Christ, God differentiated the before and after of our lives. Among other things, we distinguish what is sacred and mundane, what is hallowed and what is neutral. Further still, he differentiated our responsibilities to him and to one another. In that light, because God first freed us, those who now reconcile their lives to him and secure our freedom in his memory, hallow the ground on which they make the ultimate sacrifice of their lives. This is what the Stars of David and Roman Crosses at Normandy call to memory.

Christians should well recognize the centrality of personal sacrifice. Of all the personal sacrifices in history, no other compares to the Crucifixion, for at no other time in history did the God of Israel give his life for humankind. Now, living in remembrance of what he did, any person can claim a share in God’s sacrifice by giving his life for another. It is not remarkable that we are not God. It is altogether remarkable that he is one of us and that free, personal sacrifice shares in the divine freedom that frees us to be free. 

By public witness, the Christian Church points the way to such sacrifice as a way of life. Christ said, “Do this in memory of me.” He calls us, in other words, to live under the history of his intervention in the eternal past. Our life of remembrance now takes shape as three major forms of sacrifice: In worship, Christians join the sacrifice of their lives to the sacrifice made by Christ. By evangelization, they die to the world while leading it to him. Through corporal and spiritual works of mercy, Christians pour out of their lives in service to the poor with whom Christ identified.

There is one final thing to note about personal sacrifice. According to our religious origins, there is an economy at work in the order of freedom. While we sacrifice our lives freely for the sake of others, in giving our lives, we end up gaining them.  And by returning to hallowed ground, by remembering those who gave their lives for us, we find again the freedom that we have been given. That is the way of life under history that has its beginning and end in God. Such is the meeting of divine and human freedom. As T.S. Eliot puts it:

“We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.”¹

Andrew J. Zwerneman is co-founder and president of Cana Academy. He blogs regularly at www.canaacademy.org and is the author of History Forgotten and Remembered (2020) and The Life We Have Together: A Case for Humane Studies, A Vision for Renewal (2022). Andrew writes and narrates the film series, HISTORY250® This article is adapted from his forthcoming book, Return to Hallowed Ground, Cana Academy (2026).

1. T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” Columbia University Department of History, accessed April 21, 2026, https://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/winter/w3206/edit/tseliotlittlegidding.html. ↩︎