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.

This weekend is a special one for our family.  In the Gospel for this weekend (the Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A), Jesus calls Matthew the tax collector to follow Him.  And Matthew "got up and followed Him."  That simple.  That easy.  That moment of total openness to grace, calling, and mission - and acceptance of it.

As Jesus passed on from there,
he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post.
He said to him, "Follow me."
And he got up and followed him.
While he was at table in his house,
many tax collectors and sinners came
and sat with Jesus and his disciples.
The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples,
"Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"
He heard this and said,
"Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Go and learn the meaning of the words,
'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners."
(Matthew 9: 9-13)

We joked around a bit while we were expecting Matthew (at the time we didn't know if he was a girl or a boy - we've waited until the birth of both of our children to see what God had in mind for us.)  At the time, Thomas LOVED when his Uncle Michael came over and gave him gold coins.  He'd stock all the coins he could in his many banks.  We joked that little Thomas was our official family banker.  Since we knew that if the next baby was a boy we were going to name him Matthew, it became a running joke that we were going to have a little tax collector to go along with our banker.

Jesus called one of the class that many people considered the evil and vile of their time - a tax collector.  He didn't just call him... He went to his house and dined with him - and many other sinners, as we read.

Of course the righteous of the time asked what was going on.  If Jesus really was the messiah, the God, the savior, why was he hanging out with "those people"?

And Jesus gave the obvious answer... that if you're not sick then you don't need a doctor.  It's the ones who need healing that He comes for.  If he came for the perfect, then the cross probably would've been a lot easier than it was.

And the Gospel is absolutely packed with stories of His encounters with those for whom He came.  Those needing physical healing, those needing spiritual healing, those needing moral healing.  Types of you and me and our brothers and sisters.

In Jesus, we see the full depth of humanity's mirror of God's image - the full and true LOVE that becomes clouded in man over time, as we are an imperfect mirror of the perfect and divine.

A close friend of mine who is gay once asked me how, when my Church (as he thought) teaches that "the way he is" is so wrong, I could still find myself friends with him and care so much for and about him.

And I explained some of the above.  That Jesus' message wasn't all one of fire and brimstone and going to Hell.

Sure, He preached the Truth, and that Truth is a call to live fully the divine as exposed through Natural Law.  BUT the exposition of that truth always came over time, through personal, loving encounters, and through fully living and exemplifying the fullness of joy of living God's Will, not our own.

Christ came to show a mankind who had grown very familiar with the rules that they could be exemplified in love, not judgment and vilification.

"You catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar", the old saying says.

"Go and learn the meaning of the words, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' I did not come to call the righteous but sinners", our Savior tells us.

Certainly, that sure and true LOVE wants us to be with Him, and being with Him means turning fully toward Him and embracing His law and will.

But goodness knows, I've had a lot of stumbles in my own path... a lot of bad choices that led me down the wrong roads.  But I learned from each, and I've come to see that Christ was always there, never turning His back on me, always waiting for me to turn back around and come back to the "True path, the true way, the true life."

Praise be to God for His amazing plan, His grace, His GOSPEL ("GOOD NEWS") for the ones on the dark paths... the lonely... the sad and hurt and weeping and dying.

New life is always a breath - and a choice - away.