Celebrating 125 years on State Road

When the Jesuits at Saint Ignatius College in Cleveland purchased 20 acres on State Road in Parma, they imagined using the property as a place to get away from the dirt and noise of a thriving industrial city. How could they have known the “graced history” that would unfold on these verdant wooded acres just miles from downtown.

In 1898, rather than a Jesuit villa house, a novitiate was built and opened for the formation of new Jesuit priests and brothers. Two years later, a large four-story building was added, a place for Jesuits from around the world to come for tertianship, their final year of formation.

Not only a place for Jesuits, laymen would find welcome from the first Jesuit superior and novice master, Fr. Theodore Von Rossum, to come and experience the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. For the next 125 years, that invitation continued and expanded. What began with three men coming for a weekend experience at Saint Stanislaus Novitiate is today realized by the thousands who come annually to the Jesuit Retreat Center.

Over the course of 125 years, this house has been a place of significance. Certainly as the first place in the United States for lay people to make the spiritual exercises. It was here in Parma, that Pedro Arrupe completed his Jesuit formation before heading to Japan, and eventually serving as Superior General of the Society of Jesus. It was to this place, that Sr. Ignatia Gavin brought men in recovery to experience spiritual healing, shortly after the founding the Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, OH. In the 1940’s and 50’s the number of lay people seeking retreats expanded so rapidly that two new wings were added to accommodate them. And in the late 1960’s wise Jesuits opened the doors to lay women who also felt called to make the spiritual exercises – again the first retreat house to do so.

The original novitiate and tertianship buildings, having served their purpose and outliving their usefulness were demolished in the mid 1970’s. In their place arose a beautiful addition in 2017 which allows us to welcome an even greater number of groups and retreatants. More than five thousand individuals come to JRC each year – high school and college students, young adults from the diocese and couples preparing for marriage, those in recovery, for a weekend of community and companionship, Catholic parishes and other church groups seeking time a way and of course, men and women, young and old, who feel the call to spend a weekend, or several days, or even a month experiencing the spiritual exercises.

Our now 57 acres of woods and meadow provide a welcoming place of prayer and rest in the midst of busy Parma. Each day, thousands of cars pass by our entrance. Some will turn down that long driveway, slowing down, noticing the beauty and the quiet, and enter our doors. Here they find a warm welcome, a spirit of prayer and reflection, nourishment for their bodies as well as their souls.

In August 2023, we will begin our 125th year. Over the following 12 months, we will be celebrating the graced history that has brought us thus far – and we will imagine, with graced vision, God’s invitation to provide welcome and peace in the years ahead. Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam – all for the greater glory of God.