Dear Friends,
Saturday, I will be joining a number of my high school classmates in Columbus, Nebraska, to celebrate our 50th reunion. It was a Sunday afternoon in May, 1973, that 61 of us graduated from Scotus High School and began the next stage of our growth toward adulthood.
Those of you who are around my age will recall what the world was like in 72-73. A President was in trouble because the White House had sent in operatives to break into the Democratic Party Headquarters in the Watergate building. Congress held hearings to investigate. Vice-President Agnew resigned and a new one, Ford, was appointed. Peace talks were going on with North Vietnam in hopes of bringing the war to an end. U.S. soldiers were still dying in Vietnam but the draft was ended and we switched to an all-volunteer army. The Supreme Court decided the Roe v. Wade case dealing with abortion. The Arab countries began an oil boycott against the United States. Oil prices rose 200%. Israel went to war with its Arab neighbors in what came to be called the Yom Kippur War.
Nebraska beat Notre Dame. The first mobile phone call was made. The Eisenhower Tunnel opened. Inflation was running at 6.2%. Eugene Cernan was the last person to walk on the moon. The first handheld calculator processing basic mathematical functions was sold (we still had to use slide rules). American Pie and Tie a Yellow Ribbon were number one in music, and at the movies it was The Godfather and The Exorcist. All in the Family was the top tv show. The number one selling book? Jonathon Livingston Seagull, which praised transcendence through self-determination.
Some things have changed since then…but not most. Humankind is still doing the same things wrong that they did fifty years ago. I am sure we heard graduation speakers telling us back in 1973, “Your generation is poised to solve problems which have vexed humankind for millennia. Your generation might just be the one which finally heals longstanding wounds. Things are changing—and I believe there’s something special about this generation.” Yeah, how did that work out?
My “generation” didn’t collectively decide to do anything, and neither does any generation. Generations do not meet to make decisions. Things don’t radically change, and if they do change, they don’t change in ways that any one person could bring about. The question is not whether any particular generation is going to end racism, end poverty, end gluttony, end pride, or end any particular evil—they’re not. The question is whether you are—individually—going to be faithful to God’s call for you or not. That’s the only real question in front of us. That’s the only question that matters. Everything else flows from that. If we are faithful to our relationship to God, God will use us to bring about the change in the world that God desires.
The one thing that does strike me as I look back to fifty years ago is how young we were, how fragile we were, and yet how arrogantly self-assured we were. At seventeen, we had not had much real experience with life and yet we were filled with an idealism that must have been obnoxious. Luckily, we grow beyond this stage of life. I am sure that the group gathering in Columbus will be much humbler and reserved than we were in 1973. We are probably also a bit more at peace with ourselves and content with the world around us. Maybe the world is not much different fifty years later but we are.
Peace,
Fr. Damian