Archbishop Vigneron celebrates Detroit's patronal feast day Mass in historic Basilica of Ste. Anne, referencing Eucharistic revival
DETROIT — Faithful from around the Archdiocese of Detroit gathered at the Basilica of Ste. Anne on Friday, July 26, to celebrate the feast day of the Motor City’s patroness, St. Anne, and her husband, St. Joachim, during Mass with Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron on the final day of the annual Ste. Anne novena.
The neo-Gothic church, which Pope Francis elevated to a basilica in 2020, has served as Detroit's physical and spiritual foundation for more than 300 years since its founding in July 1701. Two days after landing on the riverbank, French general Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and his company — which included two priests — offered up the Eucharist to thank God for their safe voyage. Cadillac named the church for Ste. Anne in honor of her feast day. The current church building was constructed in 1886 and consecrated in 1887.
Since the beginning of creation, God’s plan to restore his kingdom after the fall of Adam and Eve has always included Anne and Joachim, the grandparents of Jesus and parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Archbishop Vigneron said in his homily.
“These two loyal Jewish children of Abraham were instruments in God's plan to get back his world,” Archbishop Vigneron explained. “From the beginning, this has been God’s plan to crush the head of our enemy, Satan. And when the time was right, out of Chaldea, out of Mesopotamia, God called Abraham and chose in him a people who would be His instrument for advancing his redemption of the world from the power of Satan.”
In the fullness of time, through the Jewish people who had escaped slavery and been delivered from captivity, God sent an angel to the Virgin Mary and asked her to be the mother of His son, Jesus. Anne and Joachim, in their faithfulness, were essential to this plan, the archbishop said.
“They were not simply passive recipients of the grace of redemption and deliverance from sin and death, but they were agents,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “They, as a daughter and a son of Abraham, advanced God’s plan, and so they had the virtues necessary: the excellence, the strengths they needed to fulfill their roles. They excelled in faith because they had a conviction about God’s promise; they knew that God never lies. Whatever had happened in the centuries between themselves and Adam and Eve, (they knew) God was keeping His promise.”
The Archbishop said that in 2024, the Archdiocese of Detroit can honor its patroness by imitating the virtues of Sts. Anne and Joachim, particularly now that the Church in the United States has reached the heights of its three-year National Eucharistic Revival, which crescendoed with the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis last week.
“What we need to do in advancing the Holy Eucharist is a grace, a mission not unlike Anne and Joachim’s — of making God the son of Christ present to our world,” Archbishop Vigneron said.
All of us have the mission of inviting others to join us in the presence of God in the Holy Eucharist, he added. This makes us like Anne and Joachim — participants in God’s plan.
“We have a role to play in advancing His kingdom and bringing the world back into the Father’s embrace, and for that, like Anne and Joachim, we need an increase in our virtues of faith, hope and love,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “We need to be renewed in our faith conviction that despite what appears to be a mere wafer and a bit of inexpensive wine, this is truly God with us — this is truly the fulfillment of God’s promise to Adam and Eve and all the promises he made in the Old Testament and the New.”
Like Anne and Joachim, we need to expect God to act marvelously and thus renew our Eucharistic hope, the archbishop added.
“The meaning of the Eucharist is the self-offering of Jesus to the Father and to us,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “The Eucharist is a gift of the very loving heart of Jesus Christ, and so if we are going to be faithful to our patron, St. Anne, and imitate her, we need to make a gift of ourselves to God to offer ourselves to the Father, to be instruments of Christ coming into the world.”
The archbishop expressed his humble gratitude for his role as archbishop of Detroit — leading a church family that has stood the test of time for more than 300 years.
“I am very grateful to God that we continue to be faithful to this mission, which began over three centuries ago,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “Let us give God thanks not only for the graces given to Anne and Joachim, but for the graces He’s given us, the children of St. Anne, to imitate Anne and Joachim, lo, these many years, and let us in the Eucharist pledge that we will continue to be faithful to this mission."
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