Did you know that fifty-eight years ago, the Second Vatican Council was not quite three-quarters complete? John F. Kennedy had been dead for only nine months and few Americans had even heard of Vietnam, much less any armed conflict there. World War II had ended only nineteen years earlier, and many of those boys who had gone ashore at Normandy or fought in the frozen Ardennes, and survived, were not yet forty years old.
If you were to look back to fifty-eight years before fifty-eight years ago, it would be 1906, Teddy Roosevelt would be president and Pius X, Pope. Automobiles and airplanes were in the future, all Europe was at peace and international commerce was nearing an all-time high level that would not be seen again until the 1990s.
Fifty-eight years is more than three-quarters of the time that this parish has been around, but less than one-quarter of the time this country has been around. It is pushing three percent of the time that has passed since the passion, death, and resurrection or our Lord, which should seem tiny but instead staggers with its burden of significance.
Two years shy of three score, by the reckoning Lincoln used, thus not long enough for a nation to mature, it is nonetheless long enough for a human soul to do so, and longer still than the forty-six years it took to build the Second Temple in Jerusalem. A lot can happen in fifty-eight years, a lot can change.
Fifty eight years sees two full generations and then some, that is, it’s plenty long enough to become a grandparent, even in our postponement culture; and perhaps a great-grandparent in more “normal” places and times. Could it ever see fifty-eight generations of iPhones? Perish the thought!
It’s one more than the fifty-seven varieties for which Heinz was famous, but three over the double-nickel that was imposed on our interstate highways to save gas one of those earlier times the government made that a goal. That now seems impossibly slow when crossing the country, but it remains a miracle when it happens on the Beltway: speed is deceptive. The needle can give the same reading, but the odometer click over faster and faster with every new digit. Time flies, whether or not you’re having fun.
