Fourteen Sisters have just returned from a very exciting trip to St. Louis – to participate in Augustine Institute’s first commencement ceremony on their new campus! Over the last several years, our Sisters have been working as a community to study Theology, and as the years have gone by, we have only been more and more impressed by the program, edified by the faculty, and grateful for the experience. Ten Sisters completed the coursework for credit and received their Master’s in Theology, but all the community participated as much as possible in the lectures, course reading, and many many conversations about coursework. It has absolutely been a community effort!

These years of study have be a tremendous blessing, and we are so grateful to the faculty, staff, and benefactors who made this possible. The chance to visit with our professors was a highlight of the trip, and we hope that these friendships will continue over the years.

Seeing Augustine Institute’s new campus and learning its history was also impressive. The campus was originally a summer home estate of the Catholic Desloge family. Mr. Joseph Desloge built the French inspired chateau in 1926 after volunteering with the French army in World War I. Boeing purchased the property and developed it for use in training their company leadership, but managed to preserve the original beauty of the grounds. Its guest rooms, classrooms, and large gathering spaces have readily lent it to transformation into a graduate school, though Augustine Institute will continue to adapt it more over time. The ballroom originally built for Joseph Desloge’s oldest daughter’s 16th birthday serves as the temporary chapel!

The Sisters who remained home during the trip welcomed the travelers home – providing the graduates with replacements for the cap and tassel that they didn’t wear for the commencement ceremony!

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

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!

By Sr. Madeleine Marie, SsEW

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.

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. 

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! 

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.

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!

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!