Our Lady Of The Lake

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas!

SAVE THE DATE: FEB. 1st

Our Lady of the Lake has a thriving Scout Troop #143 that has a wonderful annual tradition.  Each year,  in November, the scouts spend one Saturday morning raking the leaves of those residents who need their help.  They put the word out in October and have a deadline in early November. This year, on Saturday, November 16th,  the scouts will be out from 9a to 12p raking lawns.  Scout Master, Tom Cartwright put it into perspective, “ We love doing Yard Charge - it is an excellent way for us to help the elderly and it teaches our Scouts the importance of selfless giving”.  So if you see the scouts out in Euclid, hard at work raking leaves, give a honk of your horn or a thumbs up!

Get a Jump on your Christmas Shopping!

On October 18th, students celebrated STEM with their annual Showcase Day.  The students and teachers invited parents, parishioners and the community to come to the school to visit the classrooms and have the students present their projects. 

The OLL primary youth choir, “Friends with God”, sang for the residents of the Slovene Home on Thursday, October 17th.   The group led by Music Director, Mrs. Melissa Gali-Bird created a little bit of sunshine on an Autumn day for the folks in attendance. “We saw many smiles and received lots of compliments”, Mrs. Gali-Bird said. 

Start your Christmas Season off by enjoying a wonderful Euclid tradition;  The Euclid Holiday Celebration... Friday, December 6th, this year's event is chock full of festive Christmas music, tree lighting, ice carving, Santa and cookie decorating and we will be there to sing and host the cookie decorating. 

Our Lady of the Lake Music Ministry is hard at work recording a new anniversary CD, All Are Welcome. This CD, which is a tribute to the 10-year anniversary of OLL Parish (February 2020), is a compilation of songs from the Liturgical Church Year.

Our Lady of the Lake’s annual school fundraiser will be held on Saturday, February 1, 2020 at the Eastside Irish American Club. This year’s theme  for Life on the Lake will be Night at the Races.

Friends with God Sing at Slovene Home: Thursday, Oct. 17 @6p

OLL Parish Feast Day, The Most Holy Name of Mary (September 12) began with the OLL School children donning 10 Year Parish Anniversary shirts and after Mass, posing for an all-school photo. The evening celebration began with a hot dog roast at Arcadia Beach Club. Fr. Joe led the community in prayer and then everyone processed with the Marian statue back to the church for evening prayer, singing a Marian Litany along the way.  The evening ended with an Ice Cream Social to cap off an extraordinary day!  Our Lady of the Lake Parish will celebrate 10 years in February 2020.

September 21st was the International Day of Peace. The Nonviolence Ministry of OLL embraced this day with a message of peace by making (and encouraging the school children to make) origami peace cranes. The members of the Nonviolence Ministry distributed the peace cranes at all Masses and invited parishioners and the school children to pray for world peace.  The story behind the peace cranes is one of peace and hope for the future.

On Friday, October 18, we will be celebrating our STEM week with our annual showcase day.  All are welcome to visit the classrooms from 9:00 am-10:00 and/or 1:30 pm-2:30 pm. Our theme for this year is “Celebrating the Past and Looking Forward to the Future-Sustaining Lake Erie.” This week is made possible by a grant from Dominion Resources. 

On Thursday, September 12th Our Lady of the Lake parishioners, students and friends will celebrate their annual Feast Day with neighborhood festivities. All are invited- parishioners and neighbors alike!  

Sadako Sasaki was two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on her city of Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. She wasn’t killed, but her grandmother and several friends were. As a young girl, she was an extremely fast runner. But at age 11, she collapsed after a race and was eventually admitted to the hospital where she learned that she had contracted leukemia from the radiation of the atomic bomb. A friend told her about the Japanese legend of the paper cranes. If you make 1,000 cranes, your deepest wish is granted. Since the crane is a symbol of long life, her friend thought if Sadako made 1,000, maybe she would be cured. Sadako worked for months, completing more than 600, but realized that she was dying. On her last crane (#644), she said she wanted to write “Peace” on its wings so that it would fly over the whole world telling children and adults everywhere to work for peace, so that no other child would have to die as she was.

The vision of Our Lady of the Lake’s Nonviolence Ministry is “to reduce violence in our hearts, in our community and in the world beyond.”  With that in mind, it strives to imitate the nonviolent Jesus through education and working cooperatively.

We Care About the Whole Child!

The carefree days of summer are winding down and that means one thing at Our Lady of the Lake Parish- it’s time for our Backpack Blessing. All are welcome to attend the  10 AM Mass on Sunday, August 25th and students are reminded to bring their backpacks for the blessing.

Our Lady of the Lake’s Parish Feast Day is September 12th- The Most Holy Name of Mary.  Each year, on the feast day, OLL parishioners join in the beautiful tradition of processing through the neighborhood down to the beach where they honor Mary with prayers and a blessing from Fr. Joe at the lake itself. 

Start the School Year Off Right!

Thirty VBS children journeyed to Athens for a Holy Land adventure at the OLL Vacation Bible School June 10-14.

Music has a young face these days…Just ask the new group of Friends with God YMM (Youth Music Ministry) how they feel they can make a difference… “We like to make people smile when we sing” said one youngster, who summed it up pretty well. 

It was a perfect sunny day, on Sunday, June 23rd, for this year's Parish Picnic. Noon Mass under the shade of the pavilion at the Italian American Club was followed by a delicious picnic, bocce ball and children's games. 

Our 9th Annual Walkathon, held May 8th, brought   together our students and their families, along with the parish community and neighborhood in a time-honored show of support for OLL School. 

Our Children of Light made their First Communion on May 4, 2019.  We are proud of these remarkable second graders who represent all that is hopeful in our faith.  The children and their families celebrated the day with Fr. Joe, their teachers and catechists.

“Sometimes a worthy cause is worth working towards…” Our Lady of the Lake School students learned this valuable lesson when they saw their efforts lead to a tangible result. One that matters…

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On Sunday, May 19, Fr Joe Fortuna and Laurie Jurecki were invited to attend a celebration marking the 100th anniversary of St Paul A.M.E. Church, a community they had formed close relationships with while Fr Joe was Pastor and Laurie Pastoral Associate of the former Ascension of Our Lord Catholic Church. Marking this celebration together was a recognition of the very special and meaningful relationship that was formed between these two church communities, beginning with a shared MLK Day service back in the 1990s, and continuing through numerous shared events in the years following, including parish picnics and retreats, Palm Sunday celebrations and Good Friday prayer services, among others.

Our Lady of the Lake will be out and about in the community on June 1. Come visit us at the E. 200th Street Stroll from 10:00am-2:00pm. From there, we’ll move on down to Walk & Roll E. 185 from 2:00-6:00pm. Come by to say hi, get fun give-aways, face painting, bubbles and more!

First graders in Mrs. Howald’s class at OLL School had an amazing opportunity to get up close and hands-on with the latest technology on their field trip to Microsoft in April. While there, they learned all about the history of the company, played fun trivia games, took a behind the scenes tour of the store to see what the employees do when they are not with customers, learned coding with Minecraft, talked about technology and how important it is in our lives, created digital artwork, and they even got to play on all the awesome devices. It was definitely a field trip to remember!

Our Lady of the Lake has always had a strong commitment to providing cutting edge technology and advanced academic options to students at all grade levels. Now plans are in the works to take that technology edge to new levels, with the introduction of a new, innovative Maker Space in the school and access to educational technology for all students.

Holy Week and Easter are a very special time for our community to gather and celebrate our faith. Traditions like the washing of the feet, the children’s enactment of the Living Stations of the Cross, the uplifting gift of our music ministry, welcoming newly baptized members into our family, and of course our Easter “selfies” – we have so many beautiful Easter memories to treasure and share. To take a look at our Easter photo gallery, with lots more images, visit www.OLLEuclid.org.

Fr Joe Fortuna is widely known as a talented teacher of theology and doctrine. He shared some of his knowledge recently in a well-attended course titled “Finding God Where God Finds Us,” as part of the Cleveland Ecumenical Institute for Religious Studies (CEIRS) spring series.  He and seventeen adults from a variety of churches met at the First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland in Cleveland Heights to explore the conviction that we meet God not only in traditional and explicitly religious contexts such as Sunday worship, but very often in circumstances and situations that might seem ordinary and not religious.   Conversations included such issues as:

The Rite of Election is a very special moment for those seeking to join the Catholic community. This is the day, during their journey of reflection, discernment and formation in the Catholic faith, that all the candidates preparing for baptism gather with those from other parishes to meet the Bishop in a special service called the "Rite of Election" at the cathedral. It was wonderful to share this moment with families joining Our Lady of the Lake parish, and a privilege to be welcoming them to our parish family.

Sarah would like to run the sidebar on school registration from the March paper again in April paper.

Our Lady of the Lake School
Ninth Annual Neighborhood Walkathon

It's an annual tradition that Our Lady of the Lake school kids know very well! Come May, the students don Walkathon t-shirts, decorate and post signs and are seen happily taking a walk around the neighborhood to help the PTO raise funds for new items the school needs. This year, the PTO is raising money for new safety items.

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The 8th Grade students at Our Lady of the Lake got the chance to show their science skills in January, when they shared their projects at the school's annual Science Fair. This year's projects were particularly strong, and judges were impressed by the quality of the work, and the amount of time and attention that went into the presentations.

Three years ago, Our Lady of the Lake began the process of creating their innovative Microloan Program, looking for a way to offer more than just a hand out to hard working people in the community who wanted ways to better their lives. Since then, the Microloan Program has supported an array of small local businesses and start-ups, from a thrift store to a cleaning service, and much more.