April 17, 2025

The Altar of Repose

So much is held within these most Sacred days of the Triduum celebrations. One of the most precious traditions of this time, one the Sisters always look forward to with much anticipation, is the creating of an Altar of Reposition.

The custom is just one part of our entering into the events of the Passion, seeking to accompany Jesus and offer Him fitting love in His suffering. At the conclusion of the Holy Thursday Mass of the Last Supper, the priest carries our Eucharistic Lord in procession to a tabernacle other than the usual one, in remembrance of Jesus and the Apostles going out to Gethsemane. According to what space allows, the congregation are encouraged to visit this small altar, and to remain with Jesus for some part of these hours recalling the start of Jesus’ Passion.

At Casa Maria, the small ‘back chapel’ has always been the place for the Altar of Reposition, and is beautifully decorated by loving hands. Flowers, candles, canopies, and occasionally other symbolic pieces coordinate to illustrate the love contained in this vigil. The chapel is open to the public after the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, and then the Sisters keep a time of adoration as a community.

(The Altar a few years ago)

The following is a striking reflection on Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane from Pope Benedict’s General Audience of February 1st, 2012

“…there is the third expression in Jesus’ prayer, and it is the crucial one, in which the human will adheres to the divine will without reserve. In fact, Jesus ends by saying forcefully: “yet not what I will but what you will” (Mk 14:36c). In the unity of the divine person of the Son, the human will finds its complete fulfilment in the total abandonment of the I to the You of the Father, called Abba.

St Maximus the Confessor says that ever since the moment of the creation of man and woman, the human will has been oriented to the divine will and that it is precisely in the “yes” to God that the human will is fully free and finds its fulfilment. Unfortunately, because of sin, this “yes” to God is transformed into opposition: Adam and Eve thought that the “no” to God was the crowning point of freedom, of being fully themselves.

On the Mount of Olives, Jesus brings the human will back to the unreserved “yes” to God; in him the natural will is fully integrated in the orientation that the Divine Person gives it. Jesus lives his life in accordance with the centre of his Person: his being the Son of God. His human will is drawn into the I of the Son who abandons himself totally to the Father. Thus Jesus tells us that it is only by conforming our own will to the divine one that human beings attain their true height, that they become “divine”; only by coming out of ourselves, only in the “yes” to God, is Adam’s desire — and the desire of us all — to be completely free. It is what Jesus brings about at Gethsemane: in transferring the human will into the divine will the true man is born and we are redeemed.

In Jesus’ prayer to the Father on that terrible and marvellous night in Gethsemane, the “earth” became “heaven”; the “earth” of his human will, shaken by fear and anguish, was taken up by his divine will in such a way that God’s will was done on earth. And this is also important in our own prayers: we must learn to entrust ourselves more to divine Providence, to ask God for the strength to come out of ourselves to renew our “yes” to him, to say to him “thy will be done”, so as to conform our will to his. It is a prayer we must pray every day because it is not always easy to entrust ourselves to God’s will, repeating the “yes” of Jesus, the “yes” of Mary.

The Gospel accounts of Gethsemane regretfully show that the three disciples, chosen by Jesus to be close to him, were unable to watch with him, sharing in his prayer, in his adherence to the Father and they were overcome by sleep. Dear friends, let us ask the Lord to enable us to keep watch with him in prayer, to follow the will of God every day even if he speaks of the Cross, to live in ever greater intimacy with the Lord, in order to bring a little bit of God’s “heaven” to this “earth”. Many thanks.”

March 10, 2025

Our Journey to Champion, WI

The Sister Servants had a great surprise recently, as the Blessed Mother herself arranged an unexpected community pilgrimage! Nine Sisters journeyed on behalf of the whole community to the Shrine of Our Lady of Champion. The scheduling, weather, timeliness, and many other little miracles clearly indicated that Mary’s hand was at work in this trip!

This shrine marks the site of the only ecclesiastically approved Marian apparition in the country, where the Blessed Mother appeared to Adele Brice in 1859. Adele was a Belgian immigrant, twenty-nine years old, when she saw a Lady in white appear in the woods of Wisconsin. Her parish priest advised her that if she saw the Lady again, she should ask, ‘In God’s name, who are you, and what do you want of me?’

On her way home from Mass, the Lady appeared again, and in answer to Adele’s question, said she was the Queen of Heaven. She asked Adele to make a general confession, pray for the conversion of sinners, and begin to catechize the children of the land. At first, Adele answered this request by traveling to family farms to teach the children, but later she organized a school and brought children there. She professed vows as a Third Order Franciscan, and many women joined her to assist in her mission, also as Tertiaries, rather than as a formal religious community. Adele died at sixty-five, and her cause for sainthood is currently being investigated. Read the full story of Champion here.

Champion, though still a very humble shrine, has become a very active place for reception of the Sacraments and for asking Our Lady’s intercession, receiving many signs of Our Lady’s assistance, sometimes through miracles, sometimes in greater simplicity.

We saw this pilgrimage as a time of much grace for our community, and are very grateful for all who helped make it possible!

February 22, 2025

“Here Begins a New Life” NY Encounter 2025

By Sr. Madeleine Marie, SsEW

Looking down at New York from the air as we prepared to land!

Over Presidents’ Day weekend, Sr. Marie Francesca and I made the trek out to New York City for the annual New York Encounter. The Encounter, put on by members of Communion and Liberation (CL), is a three day cultural event filled with conversations and exhibits about everything from pop culture to education, law, and living a fully human life. According to the website, “The Encounter aims to witness the new life and knowledge generated by faith…[in order] to discover, affirm, and offer to everyone truly human expressions of the desire for truth, beauty, and justice.” In the spirit of CL, all of this unfolds within a spirit of true friendship.

It gave us a lot of hope to see the large number of families who brought their young children to the Encounter!

This year’s theme was “Here Begins a New Life,” a quote from Dante. All of the presentations incorporated this theme, particularly in asking questions about finding hope in difficult situations such as politics, communication, and science. Each presentation began with the trailer video that focused on different facets of Caravaggio’s Calling of St. Matthew. With every presentation I heard, I understood a new dimension of the video.

I first came across CL in college. For my senior seminar in Theology with Dr. Regis Martin at Franciscan University of Steubenville, we discussed Msgr. Giussani’s The Risk of Education. When I read The Risk of Education, I discovered someone who put into words everything I believed about education, ultimately influencing my decision to pursue graduate studies in French. My French professor, Dr. Timothy Williams, taught French literature and culture from a truly Catholic viewpoint that reflected his own relationship with Christ, and I wanted to do the same.

I met the movement my first year in graduate school. I attended Illinois State University, a school that boasted of its ranking as the ninth most pagan university in the US at the time. Needless to say, I didn’t see eye to eye with my professors and felt constrained by the narrowness of their academic worldviews that excluded any possibility of God or grace. Literature was no longer a source of beauty, but rather an instrument to prove an atheist or Marxist agenda.

One of my friends from Franciscan emailed me out of the blue, telling me how much I would love CL. I thought that ecclesial movements were something that only existed in Europe, so I was shocked to discover that there was a School of Community in Normal, IL, led by Ewa Chrusciel, a Polish graduate student who was working on her PhD in English. 

A 2005 CL hiking trip to watch bald eagles in Illinois. I am in the center, and Ewa is to the right of me. The five people in this picture are from four different countries (Italy, USA, Poland, and Japan).

Through my friendship with Ewa and the other young adults of our broader Chicago CL community, I found the strength to persevere in my studies, not compromising my beliefs and even occasionally challenging my professors to consider how Jesus changes everything. Incidentally, this is how I also discerned my vocation to the Sister Servants because I discovered that Christ was the only source of my joy.

The Encounter gave us the opportunity to reconnect with old friends and to make new ones from around the country and even the world. Sr. Marie Francesca and I met an Indian priest, Fr. Don Bosco Darsi, who told us about his work with organization in his diocese, Talitha Cumi Unnati (TCU). TCU exists to combat the trafficking of girls by providing education, training and support. We also met people from France, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, and, of course, Italy! 

Ewa and I reconnecting at the Encounter.

We also spent time with Christine Wohar, a dear friend of our community and president of FrassatiUSA, which promotes the spirituality of the soon-to-be canonized Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati. We have collaborated with Christine for many years, and we were happy to attend the presentation she took part in on the lives of Bl. Carlo Acutis and  Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati. Despite these saints being separated by 90 years, it was beautiful to see the similarities in these two young saints who truly witnessed to the joy of a life lived in union with Christ.

Christine introduced us to her friend, Kevin Becker (in the center). Kevin experienced a miraculous healing through the intercession of Bl. Pier Giorgio, which while not the official miracle for his canonization, is a beautiful testimony to the power of Christ working through the saints.

The highlight for Sr. Marie Francesca was a panel discussion on the virtue of hope in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. The room was packed to standing room only, and everybody was moved by a story about how one of the panelists, Michael Drout, discovered hope in the tragedy of losing his son to an overdose.

This quick trip to New York was full of blessings for both of us, and I was happy to have the opportunity to share this weekend with Sr. Marie Francesca!

We shared dinner and fellowship one night with our Bishop Steven Raica (our local bishop in Birmingham), Mother Louise Marie’s two brothers, Christine Wohar, our dear friends Marco and Alessandra Saccaggi.

January 11, 2025

January Fun!

Blessed 2025! Birmingham has been finishing out the Christmas season with the excitement of a snow day!

From all of us at Casa Maria, we hope you have had a fruitful Christmas season. The Church so graciously gives us these three weeks after Christmas to ponder the wonder of the Incarnation, the Word becoming flesh, the second Person of the Trinity becoming like us in every way but sin.

Several Sister Servants were blessed to travel to Salt Lake City for FOCUS’ annual SEEK Conference. Usually held during the first week of January, it is an extremely powerful experience to attend Mass with 17,0000 other participants, especially during the Solemnities of the Christmas season. Christ the King reigns from His holy throne in Bethlehem, a swaddling infant destined to redeem every single one of us.

Sr. Mary Grace, SV, commented during one of her SEEK talks: “Jesus Christ doesn’t just bring meaning to our life, He is the meaning of our lives and we are wanting until we have Him.” 

We revived last year’s fun of making Christmas ornaments out of eggshells, and love seeing the variety in everyone’s creativity! This year, six eggs went to the SEEK conference for six lucky raffle winners.

Let us resolve this year, especially in this Jubilee Year of Hope, that Jesus be the center of our lives. Let us entrust ourselves totally to the Holy Spirit and the Blessed Virgin in order to imitate Christ more closely!

December 26, 2024

Merry Christmas from the Sisters!

Let us all rejoice in the Lord,
for our Savior has been born in the world.
Today true peace has come down to us from heaven.

– Entrance Antiphon for Midnight Mass

We wish all our beloved family and friends a blessed and Merry Christmas! We wanted to share with you just a few glimpses of Christmas at Casa Maria, in these days so steeped in rich liturgy, when the rejoicing at God’s goodness cannot be contained! Let our joy overflow into everything we do, as we bring to the world the little Christ child who has come to earth.

A chorus of angels accompanied Mary and Joseph as they searched for shelter in our makeshift Bethlehem…
… and at last led Mary, Joseph, and all the faithful, to the place where they would find a welcome!

This year Sister Ave Maria painted this stunning icon to receive the infant Jesus under the altar:

Grant, O merciful God,
that, just as the Savior of the world, born this day,
is the author of divine generation for us,
so he may be the giver even of immortality.
Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

– Prayer After Communion, Christmas Mass during the Day