PRAYER (each day) With deep and heartfelt veneration I prostrate myself before thee, O glorious St. Anne. Thou art that creation of privilege and predilection, who through thy extraordinary virtues and sanctity wast worthy to receive from God the supreme grace of giving life to the treasure-house of all graces, blessed among women, Mother of the Word Incarnate, the most holy Virgin Mary. Deign, therefore, O most compassionate saint, for the sake of this lofty privilege, to receive me into the number of thy true followers, for such I protest I am and desire to remain so long as I may live. Surround me with thy powerful patronage, and obtain for me from God the grace to imitate those virtues with which thou wast so abundantly adorned. Grant that I may know and bitterly lament my sins. Obtain for me a most lively affection for Jesus and Mary, and fidelity and constancy in the practice of the duties of my state. Preserve me from every danger in life, and assist me in the moment of my death, so that, safe in Paradise, I may unite with thee, most blessed Mother, in praising the Word of God made man in the bosom of thy most pure child, the Virgin Mary. Amen. Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be, three times. PRAYER TO OBTAIN SOME SPECIAL FAVOUR Good 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 the present affair which I recommend to thee under thy special protection. (Here name it.) Vouchsafe to recommend 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 issue. 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 praising and blessing Him through 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.) Let us pray. Almighty and eternal God, who didst vouchsafe to choose St. Anne to bring into the world the Mother of Thy only Son, mercifully grant to us, we beseech Thee, who devoutly honour her memory, grace to obtain, through her merits, the blessings of eternal life. Who livest and reignest world without end. Amen.
Novena to St. Anne
The nine days before 26 July, with Leo XIII's indulgenced prayer to the mother of the Virgin and the manual's petition 'to obtain some special favour' — 'Good St. Anne, mother of her who is our life, our sweetness, and our hope, pray to her for us.'
17–25 July before the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne; for mothers, for the childless, for a happy death; on Tuesdays in Brittany and Quebec.
Anne is not named in Scripture; her name and Joachim's come from the second-century Protoevangelium of James, and her feast, kept in the East from the sixth century, was extended to the whole Latin Church by Gregory XIII in 1584. Devotion to her as grandmother of Christ and patroness of mothers, of the childless and of the dying became immense in Brittany, Quebec (Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré) and the American parishes that printed this novena.
The daily prayer is the one Leo XIII indulgenced in 1886, with three Our Fathers, Hail Marys and Glory bes; Blessed Be God records the further grant of seven years and seven quarantines for the novena made before her feast. The petition for a special favour and the invocation are from Our Favorite Novenas (1897).
A novena is nine consecutive days (or nine consecutive weeks of one fixed day) of the same prayer for the same intention; a day missed breaks it, and it is begun again. Confession and Communion during the nine days, or on the last, were the ordinary conditions for the plenary indulgence.
The prayer, three hundred days once a day — Leo XIII, 20 March 1886 (Raccolta, 1910, no. 319); seven years and seven quarantines for the novena said before the feast (Blessed Be God, 1925).
