
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. Anne
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.