Jennifer writes: Many grandmothers pray to St Ann for their grandchildren but a friend of mine is reluctant to do so. She said to me, ‘My own mother had a great devotion to St Ann but St Ann sent her a lot of crosses.’ I didn’t know how to answer her. Fr Bernard McGuckian SJ writes in reply.
Misunderstandings, unfortunately, can have long-term consequences. I think we have one of them here. From your letter we learn that a lady who happened to be greatly devoted to St. Ann also experienced ‘a lot crosses’. The lady’s daughter seems to have come to the conclusion that this devotion was the cause of her mother’s crosses. I would be inclined to think that rather than being the cause of the crosses, her devotion to St. Ann probably helped her carry them more courageously.
The mother you mention was obviously a good, devout person who accepted the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. She believed that members of the Church Triumphant, those countless human beings now in the endless happiness of heaven, can – and actually want to – help us who are still struggling here on earth. The thing that they most wish for us – perhaps the only thing – is that one day we will join them.
The lady in question opted to turn for help to one of the greatest ofthem, the Mother of the Blessed Virgin. Although she is not mentioned in the Scriptures, we learn from well-authenticated tradition that her name was Ann (Anna, Anne, Hanna). And even if her name was not Ann, which means ‘precious’ or `grace’, we certainly know that she existed. Not only is she the mother of the Blessed Virgin, she is the grandmother of the Saviour. For these two reasons alone it is impossible to overestimate her place in the Divine scheme of things. We can be sure that St. Ann, like all good mothers and grandmothers, has no other interest in us but what is for our own good.
It has not been revealed to us how exactly the blessed relate to God in heaven, and that includes St. Ann. One thing I would be pretty certain that they do not do is to play at being God. It is only in God that St. Paul tells us ‘we live, move and have our being’. No one has put it more beautifully than Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Jesuit poet:
Thee, God, I come from, to thee go,
All day long I like fountain flow
From thy hand out, swayed about
Mote-like in thy mighty glow.
Ours is a ‘hands-on’ God. There are things that He does not delegate or hand over to anyone else, even to Our Lady herself. This certainly applies to ‘crosses’. About these, one saintly woman who, herself, experienced many of them, St. Rose of Lima (1586-1617) had this to say: `No one would complain about the cross or about hardships coming seemingly by chance upon him, if he realized in what balance they are weighed before being distributed to men’.
Nothing happens to us by chance. For St. Augustine of Hippo, who thought more deeply about these things than most, God is somehow involved in three ways in everything that happens in the universe. Either He wills it, allows it or does it. He positively wills peace for us in this life and eternal happiness in the next. He only allows sin and evil in human life for reasons that we can no more than guess at. Then there are some things he does that are totally independent of any human intervention. Creating the universe out of nothing is one of these, or keeping the stars in motion.
With regard to St. Ann herself, surely she must have a very special place in God’s Providence. The Immaculate Conception took place in her womb. Since this was the moment when Eternity broke into Time in an unheard-of way, it is not surprising that she has featured prominently in Christian tradition from the earliest days. According to this ancient tradition her remains were brought across the Mediterranean Sea in apostolic times to avoid the ravages of persecution in Palestine. They are still venerated to this day in a church at a small place called Apt, some miles inland from Marseilles.
Her most celebrated shrine is Sainte Anne d’Auray in Brittany, the only place in the world where she has ever appeared. It was to a farmer called Yves Nicolazic on 25 July 1623. Like her daughter at Lourdes two centuries later, she caused healing water to flow and asked that a church be built in her honour. The large basilica there, still visited by over two million pilgrims each year, has been the scene of many extraordinary miracles. This shrine inspired the creation of others around the world such as that of Sainte Anne de Beaupre in Quebec.
The Irish National Shrine of St. Anne is at St. Audeon’s Church, Dublin. She has been venerated on this site since medieval times, attracting thousands of pilgrims right up until the Reformation. In fact in the 14th century her feast day was a Holy Day of Obligation in Dublin. The feast day of Anne and her husband, Joachim is celebrated on 26 July.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (July 2008), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.