| Historical Background Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care Center (SHMHCC) is a non-profit Michigan corporation founded by the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan. It had its beginnings in 1981 when a Religious Sister of Mercy of Alma completed her residency program in Internal Medicine, obtained Board Certification and joined a cardiologist’s practice in Alma as a step toward “responding to the needs of personal distress and collective misery through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy” (Constitutions of Religious Sisters of Mercy #7). As other Religious Sisters of Mercy completed their medical residencies and graduate programs and other professionals became available to join SHMHCC, the services have expanded to those provided by a Board Certified General Surgeon, a Board Certified Psychiatrist, a Clinical Nurse Specialist in Adult Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing and a Priest therapist with a Masters in Counseling. Areas of Woundedness The image and witness of Catholic women religious working in this healing ministry strongly conveys certain positive values, such as, the preciousness of each life as a gift of God and the need to develop its potential. Looking at the totality of the human person there are four areas of woundedness addressed by SHMHCC: physical, psychological, intellectual and spiritual. 1. Physical Woundedness Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care encompasses the care of the human person. Integral to this care is the understanding that the human person is created by God and is a body/soul creation. The dignity of the body is preserved at all times. Physical illness is treated through professional excellence. All means available to alleviate the particular dimension of human suffering that the patient is experiencing are utilized. The patient is seen as patient not as a health care consumer. This is important because to be a “patient” is to understand and embrace the value of suffering. Human suffering is reverenced as having the possibility of leading to the transcendent dimension of the total person. At the same time illness and disease are recognized as an evil and health is recognized as the good to be achieved. The treatments given are administered in cooperation with each patient’s participation in the work of their healing and recovery and with an understanding that this work always involves the patient, body/soul. Prayer beseeching that the service of healing always partakes in the Mercy of the Father is constant in the care of our patients. “Mercy signifies a grief for another.” (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa, II, II, Q 30) We strive to serve the patient with heartfelt sympathy for the distress of the patients and their families. Compassion is always accompanied with the understanding of the gift each patient and their family is to us and to society. The whole process of healing, the work of the one who serves and the work of the patient is seen as a participation in the Redemption. 2. Psychological Woundedness A second area of human woundedness is found in those who are called to serve the Church as consecrated women religious, brothers, seminarians and priests but are experiencing psychological and emotional difficulties. Affective maturity, as described by Pope John Paul II in his document, I Will Give You Shepherds, “requires a clear and strong training in freedom, which expresses itself in convinced and heartfelt obedience to the ‘truth’ of one’s own existence, that is, ‘to the sincere gift of self’ as the way and fundamental content of the authentic realization of self. Thus understood, freedom requires the person to be truly master of himself, determined to fight and overcome the different forms of selfishness and individualism which threaten the life of each one, ready to open out to others, generous in dedication and service to one’s neighbor.” SHMHCC provides a Residential Program that offers support and guidance for personal and spiritual growth so that the individual may respond more fully and freely to their call within the Church. 3. Intellectual Woundedness In a society where secular relativism dominates, searching for the truth becomes difficult. This has lead to a widespread intellectual woundedness as regards knowledge of the truth. The Catechism of the Catholic Church and related documents are used to present the Church’s teaching promoting human solidarity, love for the poor, a just social order, and charity. In these same documents the Church’s condemnation of homicide, abortion, euthanasia, and the use of the death penalty are considered. All these teachings are related to the central affirmation of the dignity of every human being. To address the area of ignorance, SHMHCC provides a weekly catechetical class, and workshops on moral and ethical issues. |
| Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care History |
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| Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care Center, Alma, Michigan |
| Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care Center has a chapel dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus with the Most Blessed Sacrament reserved for private prayer. |
