Faith, family and the NYPD were all he lived for.
Officer Rafael “Ralph” Ramos was just two years on the job he loved, and just one hour away from completing a religion degree, when four bullets from a madman’s gun killed him and his partner, Wenjian Liu, 32, a week before Christmas.
As Ramos was laid to rest Saturday, it did not escape notice that he’d died on the brink of realizing his dream becoming a police chaplain — of joining the two emblems he so cherished, shield and cross.
But Ramos, 40, always achieved what he set out to, his widow told Police Commissioner William Bratton.
And during a moving eulogy at the family’s church in Glendale, Queens, Ramos achieved that one last dream.
“I am appointing him an honorary Departmental Chaplain of the 84th Precinct,” Bratton announced.
“Everybody called him ‘Father Ramos,’” one fellow 84th Precinct cop said after the funeral in Christ Tabernacle Church, where Ramos worshipped for 14 years and served as an usher.
“He was like everybody’s big brother. If he heard anybody having a problem on the phone, say with his wife, he would go over and talk to them,” a shattered colleague said.
“He would tell them, ‘You should work that out.’ He hated to see anyone fight or argue. He would offer to help them, to listen, even pray with them.”
Ramos and his sister Sindy were born and raised in hardscrabble East New York. Their father died when he was just an infant, and Ramos “took on the father-figure role … as he grew,” Bratton eulogized.
“Cops who served with him said you could see that in the way he worked,” the commissioner said.
“Other cops said the same thing — he came on the job older, a family man, street smart. Worldly. He knew how to handle people, and the younger cops looked up to him,” Bratton said.
“He never shirked a task, and he never complained. You should be so proud of him as we all are,” Bratton told the two sons.
Ramos was a graffiti artist as a teen, tagging walls in the East Village with his handle, “Pote,” Spanish slang for “jar of goodness.”
“He filled sketchbooks with art,” remembered Queens artist George Ibanez, 49.
But even back then, Ramos wanted to be a cop, though it would be a dream deferred.
He married his sweetheart from Franklin K. Lane HS in Queens, Maritza, and spent 14 years delivering packages for DHL, as the couple raised their two sons, Justin, 19, and Jaden, 13. Still, the pull of police work remained strong.
He took a job in 2009 as a school safety officer — at the Rocco Laurie School on Staten Island, named for an officer assassinated with his partner by the BLA in 1972.
Ramos finally entered the police academy in 2012 at age 38.
“Your mom said he’d come home pretty tired, competing with all those younger recruits,” Bratton told Ramos’s sons in his eulogy. “But he passed with flying colors, wearing the gold braid for being in the top of his class.”
Ramos filled his Facebook page with pictures of “civilian partner” Maritza — and inspirational messages.
“If your way isn’t working, try God’s way,” he posted on Aug. 26.
And on May 17, it was this hopeful message from Jeremiah 29:11.
“For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future!”