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Feast
July 26
Profile
Of St. Anne we have no certain knowledge. She is not mentioned in
the New Testament, and we must depend on apocryphal literature, chiefly the Protoevangelium of James, which dates
back only to the second century.
In this document we are told that Anne, wife of 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." Anne replied, "As the Lord my God liveth, if I beget either male or female,
I will bring it as a gift to the Lord my God; and it shall minister to Him in holy things all the days of its life
" And thus Anne became the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The devotion of St. Anne was known in the East in the fifth century,
but it was not diffused in the West until the thirteenth. A shrine at Douai, in northern France, was one of the
early centers 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
Beaupre in the province of Quebec.
Name Meaning:
Anne (Hebrew, Hannah, grace; also spelled Ann, Anne, Anna) is the
traditional name of the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Patronage
Against poverty,cabinetmakers,Canada,carpenters,childless people,archdiocese
of Detroit,Michigan ,grandmothers,grandparents,homemakers,housewives, miners,mothers,Connecticut,poverty, pregnant
women, Quebec ,seamstresses, stablemen,sterility , women in labour.
Representation
Door, holding Mary or Jesus in her arms or lap; teaching Mary to
read the Bible; greeting Saint Joachim at Golden Gate; woman with a book in her hand
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