Marymount Intergenerational Campus Celebrates Mission Day

For the first time all the ministries on the Marymount Intergenerational Health and Education Campus in Garfield Heights celebrated a Mission Day together with an outdoor Mass on May 18. Bishop Roger W. Gries, O.S.B, celebrated the Liturgy which took place at the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa. Marymount Hospital, The Village at Marymount, Trinity High School, Marymount Child Care Center, and the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis were represented.

“We celebrate Mission Day at Marymount Hospital because it’s essential for the people we serve to know we are a Cleveland Clinic Hospital and continue to be a Catholic hospital,” said Sister Betty Gulick, Director of Pastoral Care. “We have specific covenants in our binding agreement that provide for us to follow the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Institutions. We operate with a Special Member status for the oversight of our Catholicity by the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis and the approval of the Diocese.”

“Since The Village at Marymount is only five years old, we are still growing in the understanding and practice of how to live Mission according to the Franciscan spirituality the Sisters brought to all the ministries on the campus,” reflected Dan Storey, Administrator. He is especially pleased to have been instrumental in establishing a Franciscan Spirit Award for employees, replacing an Employee of the Month program. “This award, based on our mission values of compassion, competence and celebration of life, has engendered much more participation and excitement – each month the directors take a large check and balloons right to the winning employee’s work station where the presentation and round of applause can be shared by co-workers and residents.”

Trinity High School is celebrating the graduation of the first class of the school’s Pre-Professional Internship Program which, as President Sister Shawn Lee would say, “has been greatly blessed with success!” Dr. Thomas Maher, Special Assistant to the President, is particularly pleased that “along with internship placements throughout greater Cleveland, every ministry on the campus has been touched with the presence of Trinity student interns which we believe has been mutually beneficial to our students’ understanding of just how special this campus is – because of the presence and foresight of these wonderful women, our Sisters.” Marymount Convent, opened in 1926, was the original home of the high school, which has been housed in a separate building since the mid 1950s.

Marymount Child Care Center’s special contribution to the Mission Day Mass was the presence of over a dozen of the children leading the Bishop to the altar for Mass. They each held paper candles while they faced the congregation and sang, “This Little Light of Mine” – to the delight of everyone present. The Center’s home is on the ground floor of the original motherhouse building. Thirty-one sisters reside on the top two floors of the building in 28 apartments recently recreated out of what were once 80 small “sister” bedrooms.

“Every building and ministry on this campus came into existence as a response to needs as perceived by the Sisters,” said Sister Mary Alice Jarosz, Director of Mission Integration. “Today we are continuously awestruck by the commitment and dedication of so many ministry partners – individuals who make personal sacrifices because they have ‘caught the Franciscan spirit’ of our founders and have become determined to carry the legacy into the future. Our Mission Day Mass together is the best way to thank God for such great gifts!”