Our Lady of the Lakes Parish: St. John’s Church in Stratton, Our Lady of the Lakes Church in Oquossoc and St. Luke’s Church in Rangeley, will be having a “Welcome Home” celebration on Sunday, August 22 from 12noon- 3pm across the street from the church in Oquossoc at 43 Rangeley Avenue.
A full mass will be followed by a bring your own picnic lunch social that will be co-chaired by Rick Dodge and Suzanne Chelidona-Stack.
Father Anthony Kuzia, pastor of Our Lady of the Lakes Parish is especially looking forward to the event. “It’s been over fifteen months since we’ve had an opportunity to be together.”
Besides phonecalls and occasional visits, Fr. Kuzia informed me of the various lines of connection that have been maintained. “We have livestream on Sundays. We have made an effort through zoom, with meetings, bible studies, book clubs, all of the committees, etcetera, but people really haven’t had a chance to be with one another physically. We’ve made every effort to keep in touch with people but it is time to just be in presence of each other. You know, to meet, to talk.”
For over a year, with the help of volunteers and through various means they have found ways to make it work, but it hasn’t been easy. Fr. Kuzia, “Throughout the whole pandemic until the governor relaxed, our people were social distancing and they were observing very strictly. They were reaching out. I would visit them or they would visit, but it was very restricted. We were able to gather, but we could only gather in very limited ways. We could not bring in more than 50 people for any service and we were limited because of our facilities being small and with social distancing we were really restricted. Like we have in here (motioning to the church), we only have 26 pews, we were only able to use 8 of them.”
When the opportunity arose for more travel, many parishioner’s first order of business was to visit with family. However, there was nothing substantial at the church. While more recently there has been larger gatherings, there hasn’t been everyone all together and certainly not for any significant length of time. In response to in person gatherings, Fr. Kuzia had this to say “That has happened somewhat since we’ve returned to public masses but oftentimes there’s just not enough of an opportunity for people to linger and a lot of people initially once they were able to, they went to visit their families and they’ve either gone or their families have been here. So there really hasn’t been an opportunity for people to really come together to spend time with each other and this is really an opportunity to do this before people leave for the summer, because we do have a number of seasonal people who are present and who are part of our community and also before the children go back to school. So it’s just that kind of a good opportunity to just be outdoors and just enjoy one anothers company.”
The welcome packs offered at the church have a more thorough history of the beautiful Our Lady of the Lakes Church structure, but Fr. Kuzia offered it to me in his own words. “The history of this is very interesting because it is Fly Rod Crosby who actually built this church- who is responsible. As a young lady she had been sick, and she was in Lewiston at a hospital there run by the sisters, and she was very much impressed by the way in which the sisters cared for the sick. When she returned back home to Phillips she converted to Catholicism. She was very much involved with Rangeley, and she wrote to the Bishop and she asked why is there not a Catholic church in Rangeley. He wrote back and said if he had the money he would build one. She raised the money. This property where it is right now was given to her for that purpose by the railroad and she oversaw the construction of the building. Then in 1908 it was that the bishop came and dedicated it.”
Fr. Kuzia has been a priest for 45 years and so I was wondering in his experience, how this period of time compared with the hardships of previous decades. “It was different. This pandemic was different than anything I have experienced in 45 years because it impacted the way in which I would relate with people, because of social distancing and respecting another person’s health and wearing masks. So a lot was done by telephone or other ways. There was some visitation but very little of that. Thank God for social media really you know to be able to do that.”
Suzanne Chelidona-Stack agreed, “We had parish council meetings, pastoral council, the meetings for the finance committee, we have two book clubs going and we also had two different bible study groups. Zoom has been so nice. I love Zoom now. I’d never gone on Zoom before and I love it. We’ve had up to 12 people at bible study and we can all talk and we can all see each other. It’s nice.”
Rick Dodge expanded how Fr. Kuzia was dealing with the new technology. “He’s better than he let’s on.” Adding, “The local diocese provided Father with a grant he had to apply for to be able to livestream our masses.” Rick Dodge and the parish also made an effort in the Spring of 2020 to reach out to all of the parishioners to find out if they had any needs and things of that nature. So that was done pretty much through telephone and social media.”
Moving here during this period must have been a strange time to join the community and so I asked Fr. Kuzia how he has enjoyed his two years here so far and if he has felt welcome. He responded enthusiastically. “Oh, they have been very good! Very much so! The people are down to earth and they’re very helpful. It really is a good place to be.”
For more information or to volunteer for the celebration, please contact Rick Dodge at 207 779-7502 or Suzanne Chelidona-Stack at 617 957-6776.