Parishioners of Immaculate Heart Church, here in Crosslake,
said goodbye to Father Ryan Moravitz a few weeks back. There are a lot of
accolades that I could use to describe the man but with respect for his
successor, I will only say he will be missed and I’m sure that’s the way he
wants it to be. I have a couple of good reasons to feel so thankful for knowing
him. He was just new here when my wife passed away and her funeral was one of
the first ones he officiated at. He was a comfort to me at a difficult time.
Later on, I was blessed to go with him and others to Rome on a faith filled
pilgrimage and got to know him as a man too-- and not just a Priest.
There is always some sadness when you have to say goodbyes
to Priests, Pastors, anyone you have turned to for religious guidance and this
happens a lot in the Catholic Church. Maybe Father Ryan said it best at his
last Mass when he said, Priests are expected to mimic the Apostles to some
extent and that’s how they preached and taught while they were here on this
earth. They did their job and then they moved on. That being said it isn’t easy
to say those goodbyes for either him or us, but its what’s expected of pastors
and we his parishioners need to accept it.
I have said a lot of goodbyes in my lifetime besides
teachers and pastors. At graduation you leave all your classmates behind.
Anyone who has retired after working for years with friends and fellow workers,
knows all of a sudden the feeling of not having much in common with people you
worked with and for, all those years and soon you drift away. Or you buy a new home and leave long
loved neighbors behind or perhaps they move and leave you behind. You watch
your kids grow up and go their separate ways in life, and yes you don’t say
goodbye but you do have a degree of separation you’ve never experienced before.
Then there is the end of life goodbyes and those are the toughest because there
is a finality that eventually sinks in, that you will never see them again. At
least not on this earth.
But as each door closes, another opens and new friends, new
loves, new relationships and neighbors come into your life. None of them are
meant to replace anyone who was part of our lives before but rather they are
new friends and family you never knew existed or for that matter knew were
coming. Its all part of this journey we call life. I have often said that as we
reach our senior years, if we could somehow dissect our minds and personalities,
you would find bits and pieces of everyone we ever came in contact with that we
have let into our lives. For those of us that took the good bits and pieces and
not the bad, we gained something we never could have found in any other place
and out of that, we became a far better person and a more complete person.
As for the people of Immaculate Heart. Father Ryan’s leaving
is not simply our loss and somebody else’s gain. It’s for us a new adventure, a
new opportunity to get it right and yes, somewhere, someplace, where Father
Blake our new Pastor just came from, I’m sure someone is feeling just like we
do.
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