DIADEMS OF THE DECADE (072007dm.htm) Denise Michele Trias contributes a piece on Good St. Anne, Patron of Mothers as featured on The DailyCatholic, a Traditional Catholic publication dedicated to perpetuating the One True Faith and preserving the Traditional Latin Mass in this time of the Great Apostasy by upholding the sedevacantist syllogism in order to Save All Necessary Catholic Traditions in the United States (SANCTUS) and preserve the Truths and Traditions of the Church founded by Jesus Christ upon the Rock of Peter.


Diadems of the Decade from Thursday, July 26, 2007, vol 18, no. 207

                Good St. Anne, Patron of Mothers

      How could we ever forget Mary's mother and Jesus' Grandma? Denise Michele (Trias), who is presently fighting for her life in her battle with cancer, illustrated three years ago how St. Anne sets the example of perseverance and the priority of bearing children. She is the Patron of Mothers, the greatest of Grandmothers. What other term can one give to this awesome, obedient and patient loving mother of the Mother of God? She is the patron of many and, in the great clarion of saints is often overlooked, lost in the shuffle since she was one of the very first saints. Her cooperation with God through her spouse Joachim produced in her autumn years the miracle of birth. In her womb was formed the most Immaculate, perfect finite being the world has ever, or will ever, know. How could we ever forget Mary's mother and Jesus' Grandma? This is a lesson lost on today's selfish, instant-gratification generation who have so sadly forgotten that the rewards of motherhood are 'rolled over' in Heaven forever. Why? Because mothers work in cooperation with God to populate Heaven, and this would never have been possible without the fiat of good Saint Anne. Please keep Denise in your prayers.

    O Glorious St. Anne ! How we thank you for your patience in the good God to send to you a child when all of your neighbors mocked you as unfit to be a mother.

    How often God uses the weak to shame the strong, or one's long suffering to accomplish a great miracle. As you shed tears year after year hoping and wishing to bare a child, if you had only known that God had preserved to you to carry the Mother of God and Joachim your spouse to be her father, would you have been happier during those years?

    Would you have had more patience? Cried less? Worried less? Prayed less?

    As the women of our time throw their children to strangers in daycare, murder them in the womb or deny them to exist at all, we have before us your great sufferings in patience as a model of how precious a child is that God gives to those who will welcome and wait for this great gift.

    Never did you close your heart or womb to the possibility of giving life to another. Never did you tire in begging God to grant your desire.

    Your name Anne means "generous, merciful, gracious." (Good St. Anne p. 26, Tan Books and Publishers)

    Your name is symbolic of the traits of a good mother: generous to her family in sacrifice, merciful to the poor around her including her neighbors and own children, gracious to the good God in granting the needs for her abode.

    The Abbot Trithemius says that those who venerate you St. Anne will "want for nothing, either in this life or the next." (Good St. Anne p. 29)

    He goes on to say, "This powerful Saint has preserved thousands from contagious diseases. Through her intercession, evil spirits have been expelled. For the barren in the married state, she obtains children and heavily assistance in delivery. She inspires the despairing with trust in God's mercy and excites the tepid to zeal and fervor."

    As our women here in America throw off the yoke of motherhood, fly after careers abandoning their children, leave the hearth of the home to grow cold, dear St. Anne, you inspire us to beg God to fill up our barren wombs and pass on the treasure of the living.

    Dear St. Anne, we pray to you today that you will remind these poor women that the future of our country and of our Church is their children. Remind them that they have the most precious and glorious career of all: to form the future mothers, fathers, leaders, doctors, teachers, priests, religious sisters, truck drivers, plumbers, accountants, nurses, managers, and scientists.

    How important is the lap of a mother, so neglected and forgotten today in our sterile world of strollers and cribs! A mother is a teacher, a mentor, a guide, a friend, and a confident to her children.

    As our country ages and withers away who will care for the old who chose to be barren or to kill the babes in their wombs? The elderly die lonely because they forgot the importance of being mothers.

    Their make up and high heels, their money and their hairspray, their diplomas and their promotions in following a career over being mothers will never make up for the children they could have offered to God for eternity, for the babes who could have given them the affection they needed throughout the years, for the loneliness they could have avoided as their bodies declined and decayed. For the treasures they could have offered to God for all eternity.

    The women who sneered and criticized the tired mothers who had many children and made many sacrifices will go to bed each night crying in their old age as the women they looked down upon smile with joy at their grandchildren and great grandchildren who bring to them a continuous supply of happiness, never to be taken away.

    And would if you dear St. Anne had listened to your neighbors belittling and whispers at how you were to be an old maid?

    We would never had our Saviour dear Jesus who opened Heaven for us if you would have said to Our Lord, "Forget it. I know You will never hear my prayer."

    But, instead He rewarded your patience and your tears and sent the most wonderful girl child the world has known - the most Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.

    What amazes me, is how you suffered so long to finally take her into your arms, only to give her up so soon there after to study the ways of God. (Good St. Anne, p. 33) "She did not hesitate to sacrifice this child, her greatest joy, to the call of God, dedicating her at the age of three to His service in the Temple."

    Again, you are a great model to mothers. The lesson there is that our motherhood is not for our own end. Our children are not for us in the end, but for God and for others.

    May the mothers in our midst understand how ready you are to give the assistance to them who venerate you and choose you as their patron and model as you are described so well here:

        "She preserves peace in married life, restores harmony in discord and often wonderfully changes the bad disposition of a husband or wife. She protects the birth of children in an extraordinary manner: bestows blessings that lighten the task of rearing children properly; brings wayward children back upon the right path; obtains restoration to health for the mother when sick; preserves her precious life for her family, for her helpless children; and prevents the loss of husband and father. She revealed to St. Bridget that she would protect all who live chastely and peacefully in the married state." (Good St. Anne, p. 32, 33)

    To learn more about St. Anne, Catholics may read the following:

  • Good St. Anne by Tan Books and Publishers
  • St. Anne Novena by Daniel A. Lord, S.J.
  • City of God, The Conception by Venerable Mary Agreda

      For Catholics visiting New England, they may pay a visit to St. Anne Parish and Shrine in Fall River:

    Pilgrims visiting the Shrine will be greeted by a Basilica like church, not too far from Battleship Cove in Fall River, MA.

    The front of the church has the phrase "Ora Pro Nobis" (pray for us) and a statue of St. Anne holding Mary and looking down upon those who enter.

    Inside, as you walk up toward the high altar toward St. Anne, Bishops, Saints and Popes look down upon you from above. The side altars are dedicated to Dominican Saints such as St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena.

    In the crypt, mothers of children are greeted by a special treat to show their charges of bright and cheery painted statues of St. Anthony, St. Joan of Arc, Our Lady of Fatima, Padre Pio, St. Frances, the Sacred Heart, Our Lady of Lourdes, St. John Vianney, Mother Cabrini, Our Lord of Sorrows, St. Rose of Lima, St. Martin de Porres, the Infant of Prague, St. Dominic Savio, St. Gerard Majella, St. Jude, St. Therese and, of course, St. Anne with Mary.

    The Shrine is just a little over an hour from Boston. A family can easily spend two hours praying before and enjoying the beauty of each and every statue.

    Before these great works of art dedicated to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass are destroyed or demolished, take your children to see and remember the great saints of the Church, especially their Patron, St. Anne:

      • Comfortress of the Sorrowing
      • Mother of the Poor
      • Health of the Sick
      • Patroness of the Childless
      • Help of the Pregnant
      • Model of Married Women and Mothers
      • Protectress of Widows
      • Patroness of Laborers
      • Patroness of Christian Mothers
Novena Prayer To St. Ånne
    O Glorious St. Anne, filled with compassion for those who invoke thee and with love for those who suffer, heavily laden with the weight of my troubles, I cast myself at thy feet and humbly beg of thee to take under thy special protection the present affair which I commend to thee.
    (State your petition)
    Be pleased to commend it to thy daughter, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and lay it before the throne of Jesus, so that He may bring it to a happy outcome. Cease not to intercede for me until my request is granted. Above all, obtain for me the grace of one day beholding my God face to face, and, with thee and Mary and all the Saints, of praising and blessing Him for all eternity. Amen.

    Good St. Anne, mother of her who is our life, our sweetness and our hope, pray to her for us and obtain our request. (three times)

    Good St. Anne, pray for us.

    Jesus, Mary, Anne, we love you, be there for us.



DIADEMS OF THE DECADE
TRANSITION TO TRADITION with Denise Michele
from Thursday, July 26, 2007, Volume 18, no. 207