There are, of course unfortunate circumstances in which folks depart from a parish (schism, discipline, toxicity, etc.). They happen and when they do they are incredibly difficult, and perhaps I will spend time in another place exploring that cluster of circumstance.
Setting those aside for the present, however, I want to consider those situations which have become among us more and more common as modern society has become liquid and transitory: parishioners leaving a parish due to a work-related or family-related move. This too awakens a kind of pain, but it is not like the pain that attends division. It is a pain that results from great joy and charity. There is laughter and there are tears and there are hopes for future reunions.
Our liturgical rubrics, however, are often lacking when it comes to resources for including these departures in the worship of the church. Here, after yesterday’s many goodbyes, are some notes:
As with wedding charges, baptismal homilies, and exhortations before ordination, it is appropriate in this place to speak from the pulpit to those about to depart. This is not cheap preaching, unless one makes it so. It is pastoral preaching… which is what all preaching should be. Don’t alter the lectionary, or make the whole sermon about the departing ones, but bring their departure into eye of the Word of God and proclaim it over them.
There should be a moment in the heart of the liturgy for prayers over those who are going to depart. There are numerous places that naturally lend themselves to this moment which do not interrupt immutable sequences of the Lord’s Service. Include your good-bye prayers within the liturgy of the church. That is where it belongs.
Have them lead-out the church in the recessional behind the cross, for we are not merely “watching them go” we are apart of the Spirit’s “sending them out” under the shadow of the Banner of the Galilean.
A good goodbye runs the risk of messing with the timing of the service. So be it. Communicate this well with the parish and then allow blessed Farewell to run her holy course.
There is a way in the world by which one can learn to make “goodbyes” easy. Don’t live like that. Being sad when someone we love leaves us is an utterly small price to pay for the joy of having gotten to live with them for the time we had.
On tears: let them be. Neither compel or fake them, nor deny them when they arise. Let them run their course as they wish. A cue can be taken from Gandalf: “I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
The Lord gives and takes away (Job 1:21). Our response in both cases is to lend our voice to the worship of the church in saying “Blessed be the Name of the Lord.”