At long last! This entry is 1 in a set of 4 that I was inspired to write during our May trip to Peoria, IL for our friend Robert’s Ordination to the Priesthood. All four entries will appear over the course of this coming week.

Funny story from our trip to Peoria for Father Robert’s Ordination:

At his first Mass on Sunday morning (the day after the Ordination) at St. Mark Church in Peoria, we were just gathering when something uniquely Catholic happened: Old met New in a very real and tangible way.

The congregation had been gathering for close to an hour in the church, and the priests, deacons, acolytes, et al were making final preparations and moving to the back of the church to prepare to begin.

Being very “by the book” new priests (Alleluia!), Father Robert and the others had of course a thurible - loaded, nonetheless - and, as a result, a LOT of smoke from the incense.

It resembled the times at camp when a new scout would try to start a fire with a bunch of large logs by loading it with a pile of leaves.

Yes, there was that much smoke.

It was glorious!

As I prayed, I found myself thankful for how gracefully and simply the smoke served to raise my thoughts and prayers and pull me from the temporal world into the reality of the Heavenly world that we would soon enter into in the Mass.

But that was quickly interrupted by The New.

Lights. Flashing lights. Loud beeping and sirens. Alternating. Lights. Beeps. Sirens. Lights. Beeps. Sirens.

For a moment, I was taken back to the last time I had been pulled over by a policeman.

But I immediately snapped out of it and started looking for the fire, the exit route, Suzanne and the boys and my parents.

And quickly noticed that no one else was moving. Except for the pastor and another man from the congregation who were hurriedly darting from the front of the church to the back - and again, and again, and again.

It seemed that someone had neglected to turn off the smoke alarm system that was obviously overly sensitive for a Catholic worship space.

Of course, the modern world has its imposing way of taking over even the most sacred of spaces and times. The sirens and lights continued for minutes - many minutes - until the sirens of the fire truck arrived and the firemen were able to verify the safety and disable the alarm system.

And Mass began and continued without a hitch.

But buried in these simple moments - and 20 minute delay to the start of Mass that really didn’t phase anyone - was a wonderful reminder of the reality of the Church in modernity.

In our Catholic faith, the oldest of the Tradition and the unwritten teaching of the Apostles meets the newest of the realities of our world, science, technology, and culture. And at the synapse, despite the debates and arguments and finger-pointing that can sometimes result, is the reality of God’s Will meeting man’s humble working and re-working of the world that he was given.

In a sense, what we saw that morning was a symbol of the reality of the Gospel brought into modernity. The message of a Law higher than all powers on earth. The message of a choice more important than any a man has made before. The message of a God of justice and compassion who gives much and anticipates much. The message of Love, of our highest calling as mankind, and of a world and a life beyond the present.

Old meets New every hour of every day as Christ continues to make Himself and His Sacrifice present on every altar of the world. As Christ enters this broken, troubled world. But which is Old and Which is New? Is Christ and the Church the “Old” and the world the “New”? No, I choose to think that we as Christians are called to see the world as the “Old” and Christ and His Church as the “New”, the goal, the normative end which we seek. Such it is in our New Life in Baptism. And are call is to carry that flame of Christ through our life here into the next.