There will be a High Mass in honour of the Feast of Saint Anne at 10:30 am, Saturday 26 July. This Mass will coincide with the quinceañera of  Jenny Pacheco d’Avila. Everyone is welcome.

Tradition tells us that St Anne, the wife of St Joachim, was advanced in years and that her prayers for a child had not been answered. Once as she prayed beneath a laurel tree near her home in Galilee, an angel appeared and said to her, ‘Anne, the Lord hath heard thy prayer and thou shalt conceive and bring forth, and thy seed shall be spoken of in all the world.’ So St Anne conceived the Immaculate Virgin Mary in her old age. St Joachim was the true father; however Our Lady, who was chosen to be the mother of God the Son, was miraculously preserved from Original Sin (Immaculate Conception). Devotion to St Anne was known in the East in the fifth century, but it was not greatly diffused in the West until the thirteenth. A shrine at Douai, in northern France, was one of the early centres of the devotion. In 1382, her feast was extended to the whole Western Church, and she became very popular, especially in France. Her two most famous shrines are at St Anne d’Auray in Brittany and at St Anne de Beaupré in the province of Québec. She is the patroness of housewives, women in labour, cabinet-makers, and miners. Her emblem is a door. St Anne has been frequently represented in art, and the lovely face depicted by Leonardo da Vinci comes first to mind in this connection. The name Anne derives from the Hebrew ‘Hannah’, meaning ‘grace’.

The image above shows a 7th Century fresco depiction of St Anne from Faras in southern Egypt, which was saved by Polish archaeologists from being submerged by Lake Nasser following completion of the Aswan dam. It is now in the National Museum, Warsaw. [Public domain image.]