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July 25, 2019By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press
STURBRIDGE - Brazilians were the new ethnic group featured at the 132nd annual Novena to St. Anne, held July 18-26 at St. Anne Shrine.
At the end of Mass July 19 they delighted novena-goers by holding a procession of girls dressed as St. Anne, other saints and the Blessed Mother under different titles, such as Our Lady of Aparecida, to whom Brazilians have a special devotion.
The Brazilians do something like this each year in May at their parish, Holy Family in Worcester, said Aparecida Alvarado, who works with the children.
Father Adriano Lessa, Holy Family’s associate pastor, who ministers to the Brazilian community there, celebrated the novena Mass in Portuguese.
Afterwards he summarized his homily for The Catholic Free Press. He said he talked about how St. Anne is important because she carried the Blessed Mother in her womb, and because she is Jesus’ grandmother. The devil can’t touch people who stay near St. Anne and her daughter, he said.
He referred other questions about the Brazilians organizing that night’s Mass to Sandra Lima, one of his parishioners.
She said that almost three years ago a preacher gave her a prophecy that she and eight other people would see the Blessed Mother on some rocks on a small “mountain.”
Two months later she and others made their first visit to St. Anne’s Shrine, where they saw a statue of Mary among rocks. She realized there were nine people in their group and remembered the prophecy.
Three months later she was praying before the cross at the shrine and felt the Holy Spirit telling her that one day they would have a Brazilian Mass there in the pavilion, she said. That’s why she cried a lot at last Friday’s novena Mass, as she saw that happening, she said.
Mrs. Lima said she met Assumptionist Father Alex Castro, pastor of St. Anne and St. Patrick Parish, where the shrine is located, last winter. She said she felt the Blessed Mother called her to go to the shrine that day, even though it was 18 degrees outside. There she met Father Castro, who learned she was from a Brazilian Catholic community and said the Brazilians should celebrate one of the novena Masses.
In 2008, Assumptionist Father Peter Precourt, then pastor of St. Anne and St. Patrick Parish and director of the shrine, had added a multi-cultural focus to the novena.
“What we’re trying to do is have more involvement, not only with the person who is presiding, but with their music ministries,” he said at the time. “This particular shrine belongs to the whole diocese.” So efforts were being made to help different cultures see it as a place of pilgrimage and peace. The Augustinians of the Assumption, often called Assumptionists, staff the parish and shrine. This year’s theme was “We are called to holiness, each in our own way.”
At the end of the novena Masses Father Castro invited those present to pray silently for their intentions in front of a relic of St. Anne. He also recalled a tradition of the novena in the past several years – inviting prisoners and shut-ins to pray the novena where they are.
“We pray for all of them also,” he said.
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