Cardinal Cupich delivered the following remarks during Maryville Academy’s Night of Hope on April 14.
Good evening — it’s a delight to join in this celebration of the enduring impact Maryville Academy makes in witnessing to the faith, compassion and power of community in its service to children and families through the Children’s Healthcare Center and Crisis Nursery.
From its beginning in 1883, caring for vulnerable children has been at the heart of the academy’s mission. As the newly appointed Archbishop of Chicago, Patrick Feehan could not turn his eye from the many orphans and other homeless children on the streets of Chicago years after the Great Chicago Fire. He could see the need to build an orphanage and urged people to support archdiocesan efforts to purchase property and build a home where children could reside and be cared for with dignity and compassion.
Just over a century later, when the U.S. bishops issued their 1991 pastoral letter, “Putting Children and Families First,” Cardinal Joseph Bernardin chose to announce the archdiocese’s response to the pastoral letter at Columbus-Maryville’s Children’s Reception Center. He observed that the center “provides a very poignant setting for addressing this subject … [as] some of the most vulnerable children in Illinois are cared for here.”
Evolving over its 142 years, Maryville continues to enhance the lives of children and their families by providing care, education and opportunities children and young people need in order to develop, thrive and flourish. Programs may change but the basics remain the same: strengthening families and loving children unconditionally, ensuring their safety and stability, as well as the means for their flourishing.
A few weeks ago on the Catholic Chicago podcast, Sister Cathy (School Sister of St. Francis Catherine Ryan, Maryville’s executive director) was asked to share a story to illustrate life at Maryville. She recalled an encounter between two teen residents, one of whom had recently moved in and was coming to terms with trauma she had suffered before arriving.
Upset and crying as she shared her story, staff members tried to console her through their comforting presence and words. Another young woman with cognitive delays, who was not verbal, upon seeing the newcomer’s distress, walked outside to the garden, picked a flower and brought it to the newly arrived resident. No words were needed — her heartfelt gesture said it all — a beautiful metaphor for Maryville’s mission of compassionate care that inspires hope, so often given by simple acts of kindness which need no words to be spoken.
Tonight is about hope. Hope is not optimism. Optimism is about tomorrow. Hope is about today. Hope is about giving a flower in welcome, telling a newcomer that no matter the circumstances of our life, God is with us, especially when we are most vulnerable.
The staff and volunteers at Maryville are sacraments of hope, each and every day, planting the seed that empowers the intellectual, spiritual, moral and emotional growth of the youth they serve. Resilience, tenacity and aspirations for the future, these are the very signs that hope has taken root in them to face challenges ahead.
And the adult world also finds hope here. Parents learn to trust the specialized care and safe haven of its Children’s Center that can assist them to navigate daunting medical conditions, emergencies, physical or mental health challenges. Families recognize that Maryville’s trained professionals and visionary programs can relieve their anxiety and address their concerns.
In addition to the offer of respite care, they can develop critical skills to care for their child, create a plan tailored to their child’s needs or forge a secure path to a better future.
The bishops of the Second Vatican Council prophetically declared in their Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, “Gaudium et Spes,” that something new is happening in our era. We are witnessing, they wrote, the “birth of a new humanism, where people are defined first of all by their responsibility to their brothers and sisters and to history” (GS 55).
These stirring words called humanity to appreciate that God is at work in those moments when we come together to address the needs of others, especially the most vulnerable. This insight has much to say about how we should understand the meaning of being church, the meaning of our baptismal call and our responsibility to take up the task of promoting a culture of solidarity that cultivates integral human development and fraternity.
Tonight is an evening to celebrate that vision, as Maryville inaugurates the Legacy of Hope award. It goes without saying that I am both honored and humbled to receive it, as I know that there are so many others who would be much more worthy to be recognized for their leadership in fostering Maryville’s work. But I can tell you, in accepting it, I will be even more conscious of my responsibility to imitate the compassion, commitment and awe-inspiring efforts of the five hundred staff of Maryville, starting with Sister Cathy.
We saw tonight in the video shown how, 24/7, Sister Cathy and her staff care for medically fragile children, young people dealing with physical or emotional challenges and families in urgent need or crisis with admirable dedication.
And as I am inspired by their example, I hope you will be too. Maryville, its staff, board members and volunteers depend on donors like you, whose generosity strengthens and supports its innovative, life-changing programs. Your presence here this evening is indispensable for its mission to continue. Please continue to be generous.
Let us entrust this wonderful community, Maryville, to their patron, Mary of Nazareth, whom Pope Leo called the image of hope, for she witnessed to the truth that “to hope is to see this world become the world of God.” And in that world, as that young girl I spoke of earlier reminded us, flowers speak volumes because they are picked with love and given with care. May God bless you, and the children, young people and families of Maryville.