Not long ago our parish said good-bye to one of our beloved priests, who has been newly-assigned as pastor to another community. Change doesn’t always come easily. As a cradle Catholic, I understand that priests don’t belong to any one parish; they belong to everyone. I know our outgoing priest has something to offer that his new community needs. I know our parish needs whatever our replacement priest will have to share. I trust that God has a plan, and it’s my job to roll with the changes and stay open to His will.

But knowing and doing can be two different things.

Especially after sitting at mass with my daughter, memorizing the sight of our priest in our church for the last time, appreciating the wonderful way he brought the Word to life and made our journey with Christ so relevant and real. Did we shed tears? You bet. But I didn’t hold back and encouraged my daughter not to either.

"If God hadn’t brought such a special person into our lives," I told her, "we wouldn’t feel like crying. Tears are a gift. They mean we opened our hearts to someone who touched us."

"No other priest will be like him," my daughter said.

"No." A life lesson.

Like change, life’s lessons don’t always come easily, but they can be full of surprises.

Our new priest arrived. Our parish welcomed him. My family went to mass. We listened.

We liked what this new priest had to say.

My daughter was a bit disconcerted by this. "I didn’t want to like him."

An understandable reaction for a teenager exploring her feelings about the loss of someone she cares about.

I’m a big believer in strong coping skills, and I was grateful for the chance to discuss this life lesson with my daughter. So we talked about the process of letting go, about how liking our new priest didn’t mean we were being disloyal to the one who’d left. But she still looked so sad, as if she understood the logic in her head, but didn’t feel it in her heart. I couldn’t think of anything else to say and tried to make her feel better.

"Did you really think God would send us a priest we wouldn’t like?" I asked.

She attempted a smile, but it was lame at best.

I spent time in prayer to discern whether or not I could say anything else to nourish this blossoming coping skill. When no answer seemed forthcoming, I didn’t persist, decided to simply let time work its magic.

Our new priest seems pleasant and friendly enough. He has the knack of delivering profound messages in beautifully simple homilies, and it appears that God has blessed us with someone who’ll quickly find his own place within our parish. I’m not the only one who thinks so. A woman at my church shared similar thoughts today as we left mass.

"Priests are like flowers in a garden," she said.

The whimsy and wisdom of her words literally took my breath away.

Some priests deliver the Word as some blossoms scent the air with heady fragrances that make me stop for a deep grateful breath; others emit subtler scents that linger long afterward. I can take this figure of speech so many places. I can ponder how God moves His priests in and out of our lives much in the way different flowers bloom with the seasons. I can compare the Church to a garden that grows love, faith and community . . . but for now I’ll just think of our former priest as a gardenia, and our new priest as jasmine.

Clearly I hadn’t waited long enough for an answer to my prayer. I’d put the matter to rest, believing I’d taken care of everything, but God answered in His own time, as I should have trusted He would. So now I’ll share this beautiful thought with my daughter because although saying goodbye can be bittersweet, we shouldn’t let sorrow overshadow the excitement of saying hello. Maybe she’ll be comforted. I know she’ll smile.