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!

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.

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

Last week, Casa Maria was happily overrun with fifty middle school girls from a parochial school in south Alabama! Their chaplain, a friend of the community, wanted the young ladies to have a day focused on the importance of discerning their vocations, whether that be to marriage, the single life, or religious life.

When the group arrived, Sister Mary Faustina explained our apostolate and the religious habit. They had a tour of the retreat center and grounds and were able to visit with the Sisters. They then heard the vocation stories of three Sisters, and were able to ask a lot of questions.

The day continued with Mass together, lunch, and a trip to the bookstore, where many began their Christmas shopping. Before they left, Father blessed any rosaries and medals the girls had bought.

God bless you girls, and we hope to see you again!

A collection of the work of artist Mandy Hain (+2023), longtime friend of our Community and sister of Sister Benedicta Marie, is now available online to view (or purchase in book form).

Best known for her sacred art and classes for children, this book is a compilation of Mandy’s work over the years, including sacred art, chapel work, decorative work, portraits, sketches, studies in oil, and her classes with children. Featuring many of her finished works, this collection also includes many of her studies, giving an idea of her artistic process. Quotations for her websites and interviews are also included, communicating Mandy’s approach to art and beauty in her own words.

Mandy explained her philosophy of a child’s capacity for beauty, “I believe that beauty is not an accessory to our lives, but a necessity through which we are exposed to the truth, and without it we cannot live fully in the image of the First Artist and Creator, or enjoy life in a fully human way. It is my joy to participate in exposing my students to images of light so that they may continue to recognize true beauty as they grow. I want to share with them the experience of creating beautiful images so that they know that they are able to create beautiful environments wherever they may be. I am always in amazement to see how well they understand what they see, and how creatively they are able to apply what they learn in class to make wonderful works of art. I believe that every child is an artist, because I think that art is a gift with which every person is endowed through their human nature, though it may be expressed in different ways!” 

After suffering with cancer for several years, Mandy entered eternal life on February 7, 2023. Her last big project was the new Christendom College Chapel of Christ the King in Front Royal, Virginia, dedicated two months after her death. Below is a short ‘Artisan Highlights’ video about this project.

photo on left: Mandy shows Sister Benedicta Marie her progress during the chapel’s construction (November 2020)

Sample pages from the book of Mandy’s artwork:

Our Sisters recently participated in a Spanish catechesis day for the Diocese of Birmingham, with about four-hundred attendees. We have been working to expand the Spanish materials we sell in our bookstore, and were thrilled with this opportunity to share them with more people! Many Spanish catechists have been working with very poor resources, and are so grateful for the materials we offered. Sister Madeleine Marie was able to introduce them to Come Follow Me children’s program as well, which we are helping to make more readily available.

The event was very well attended, and enthusiastically received – may it’s good work continue to bear fruit in parishes!

Below, see some photos of a few special events that kept us busy throughout the summer:

And now, we’re back into full gear with the fall schedule of retreats and catechesis – please keep us in your prayers and know you are in ours!