Traditional prayer
Prayer to St. Anne
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.
Pater, Ave, Gloria, thrice.
About this prayer
This prayer comes from the 1910 English Raccolta, the collection of prayers to which the popes had attached indulgences. It records that Leo XIII enriched it on 20 March 1886. It asks St. Anne for what a mother would ask for her own: to imitate her virtues, to be sorry for sin, to love Jesus and Mary, to be faithful “in the practice of the duties of my state” whatever that state is, and to be helped at the hour of death.
What the Church knows and what tradition adds should be kept apart. The Gospels do not name the Virgin Mary’s parents. The names Anne and Joachim, and the story of a childless couple whose prayers were answered with a daughter, come from the Protoevangelium of James, an apocryphal writing whose earliest form goes back to about A.D. 150. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that the story closely mirrors the biblical account of Hannah and Samuel (1 Kings 1 in the Douay; 1 Samuel in modern Bibles). The Church honours Joachim and Anne together as the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 26 July.
Devotion to St. Anne grew strong in the West from the thirteenth century. She is the patroness of Brittany and of the province of Quebec, where her shrine at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré is well known, and she is invoked as patroness of women in labour (Catholic Encyclopedia, “St. Anne”). Grandmothers have a particular claim on her: by that same tradition, she is the grandmother of Christ.
The closing line is the Raccolta’s own direction: say the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be three times after the prayer.
When to pray it
- On 26 July, the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne, and in the nine days before it.
- For your children and grandchildren, and for your mother.
- While you are waiting for a child, and when labour begins.
- For faithfulness in the ordinary duties of your state of life: wife, mother, single, widowed or consecrated.
Any indulgences named on this page are those recorded in the older prayer books it cites. Pope Paul VI reformed the Church's indulgences in 1967 (Indulgentiarum Doctrina); the current rules are in the Church's Enchiridion of Indulgences.