St. Anne

Our St. Anne pilgrimage, and a giveaway!

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I am so sorry I’m delayed in posting this! I’ve gotten swept up in summertime, I know you all know how it is!

So Monday was my two-year blogging anniversary! A day in which I’m reminded, again, how grateful I am for all the blessings that have come to me through this site — and you all are such a big part of that! I was so glad to pray at the Shrine of St. Anne in Sturbridge, MA for all of the specific intentions you sent me over email and FB, as well as some of my own:

  •  All of you and your intentions, with a special care for those are hoping for motherhood/fatherhood; those struggling after miscarriage(s); those struggling with infertility; those struggling with the effects of abortion (recent and long ago); those struggling with their motherhood/fatherhood; those who are pregnant.
  • For all your babies, here and in heaven.

I told you that it would be a most efficacious trip, grace-wise, because of alllll the suffering involved in traveling with my boys (one of the worst things I can think of! Not even joking! Though of course it has gotten better the older they’ve gotten), and I was right. A funny little story I’m sure you’ll all enjoy: My brother-in-law came with us, and gamely sat in the back with my No. 2 and No. 4, and No. 2 threw up four times in the last hour of our trip there.

Four times. Saints preserve us.

He does get motion sickness, which I somehow always seem to forget, and fortunately — and amazingly — this was the first time I was able to pass a plastic bag to him before he threw up all over the van! (St. Anne!) But then one of the bags (of the four) had a hole in it, and his shorts and shirt were covered, and my brother-in-law was helping with napkins and bags while we raced to the next rest area where I ran in to buy him new clothes because no, I would never think to bring extra clothes for my almost-ten-year-old on a day trip. I was able to get him a t-shirt, but they didn’t have shorts, so I bought two Patriots beach towels — one for him to put on the pukey seat and one to wrap around himself beach-style. He was mortified to walk around the Shrine grounds that way, but what are you going to do? And my husband saw the Patriots logo and was like No. My son’s not wearing that. But again. What are you going to do.

There was also backed up traffic, just around when the motion sickness was taking hold, and the last hour of the trip I think should have only taken twenty minutes. But then — the Shrine! So lovely!

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The first statue I saw was of the Sacred Heart:

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(So sorry some of these images are so small — I’ve been trying to fix them for two days and I’m just going to leave them as is.)

Some other heavenly friends:

St. John Paul the Great, St. Joseph, St. Augustine

And of course St. Anne. This statue was in one of her votive chapels:

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As I said on Instagram, I love seeing her portrayed as a queen. I said the prayer they had posted for all of you and your intentions, both the specific ones I brought with me and the ones you all hold in your hearts, and lit a candle (the one right in the middle).

I also offered my Mass for you all, which was held in a beautiful outdoor pavilion, and during which they prayed for all the parishioners and pilgrims present. When they said “pilgrims,” my hubs and I glanced at each other — it was such a nice little heavenly hello! There were also pink flowers that kept blowing into the pavilion during Mass, which was so lovely and so St. Anne!

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She was present everywhere, of course, from the stained glass windows:

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To her hubby’s name on the Parish Center and his very own chapel:

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(You know I was all 😍😍😍 over it!) (My hubs was like 😑.)

And there was this gorgeous statue, which I’ve never seen before! I’ve seen the one with just the holy family, but never with St. Anne and St. Joachim as well:

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Beautiful right?! And look at that inscription!

“‘From Generation to Generation’

Dedicated this 18th day of July, 2012
at the start of the 125th Novena to Saint Anne

To honor the generations of pilgrims who have come to Saint Anne Shrine and for the generations to come who will seek the intercession of Saint Anne and Saint Joachim and the Holy Family.”

That’s us!! We are absolutely covered in prayer, what a wonderful blessing.

I did make a quick stop in the gift shop, where I saw this, which I know you’ll all appreciate:

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“Any name available”! All the unusually-named kids can now have their own personalized things! (Or at least this one name card.)

I didn’t get anything there for you all, though, like I did last year, because I was presented with a different idea this year, which I think you’ll all love! Do you remember the SaintAnneStudio Etsy shop that was linked to in my Nameberry article last week? The St. Zelie peg doll was the featured image for my article? Well. I just couldn’t get over the discovery of SaintAnneStudio right at the time when I was thinking about her so much, and there are absolutely gorgeous things in that little shop, so what I have for you all this year, as a thank for being such wonderful, joyful readers, is a giveaway of this beautiful St. Anne peg doll:

As well as a gift certificate for another peg doll of your choice — either one that’s already in the shop (there are a LOT!), or a custom-made one.

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Beautiful, right?! I’m so pleased! I hope you are all as excited about it as I am!

So to choose the winner, I thought I’d do the rafflecopter thing, which I’ve never done before, and I’m just trusting it’s as easy to install and run as they say it is. Just click on this link for the Sancta Nomina St. Anne Rafflecopter giveaway, and you should be good to go!

It’ll go through Sunday, and I’ll announce the winner on Monday (which is also July 4, which on the one hand seemed a bad day to do anything blog-wise because you’ll surely all be out and about with hot dogs and swimming and fireworks, but on the other it’s a celebration day, so a great day to announce a winner!) (I’ll post next week’s consultation on Tuesday).

🎆🌹🎆🌹🎆🌹🎆🌹🎆🌹🎆🌹🎆🌹🎆🌹🎆🌹🎆🌹🎆🌹

Article on saints’ names up at Nameberry today! And that St. Anne!

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I have a new piece up at Nameberry today! Usually I try to stick to low to zero Cathtasticalness in my Nameberry pieces, but Pam asked me if I’d write an article on cool and unusual saints’ names, which was awesome of her and exciting for me, and I’m really pleased with how it came out: Best Cool, Unusual Saints’ Names.

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(It goes without saying, of course, that I don’t actually think these are the*only* best cool, unusual saints’ names — there’s an invisible “Some of the” before “best” in that title.)

And that image! Pam chose it — a peg doll of St. Zelie! — and included the bit at the bottom about the SaintAnneStudio on Etsy — can it be mere coincidence that she chose a shop named after St. Anne without any knowledge that St. Anne is our patroness?? That St. Anne! Up to lots of good!! 😄❤😄❤😄❤

Speaking of St. Anne … my second blogiversary is Monday (I know! What!) and we all (my hubs and I and the kids and my brother-in-law) are taking a mini pilgrimage to a St. Anne’s Shrine on Sunday (different one than we visited last year), during which I’ll be thanking her for her intercession and patronage, and praying for all of you and your intentions! If you’d like to send me your intentions, whether in the comments below or via email (sanctanomina@gmail.com), I’d love to take them with me. This will be a mighty efficacious trip, since “traveling with the kids” is no where on my Things I Love About Motherhood list, so you can be assured the graces will be a-raining down upon you! 😁

I’d love to hear what you think about my Nameberry piece, and don’t forget to send me your intentions!

Spotlight on: Ludmila

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Grandparents — especially grandmothers — have been on my mind this week. Feb. 20 marked the 17th anniversary of my paternal grandmother’s death; Feb. 23 was the 25th anniversary of my maternal grandmother’s; and my mother-in-law — my boys’ grandmother — is rapidly being called home, it won’t be long. Please pray for her and for our family.

In light of all this, today’s spotlight is perfect. Months ago Amanda emailed me this image from the Magnificat:

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And said,

“I love the story! It seems like more and more of these parent/grandparent saint stories are emerging lately, which makes perfect sense. The saints had to learn from someone!“

And I was so struck by that thought — the impact of grandparents on the faith of their grandchildren — that it’s stayed with me all this time. My boys have been very very blessed to have two grandmothers who have contributed in immense ways to their faith formation, as well as a living grandfather (my dad) who’s a great model of Catholic manhood, and a grandfather in heaven (my father-in-law) who I know has been praying for all of us, and who himself was also a great model of Catholic manhood. And of course we can’t forget our dear St. Anne, Grandmother to the Divine, who holds the Sancta Nomina community close.

But — as much as I’m loving the story of St. Ludmila — that name! Oof! So what can we make of Ludmila. I think the secret lies in the second part of her name: Mila’s got a totally current look and sound, and according to behindthename the -mila element of Ludmila means “gracious, dear.” How lovely! Another spelling is Ludmilla, so –> Milla, a la actress Milla Jovovich, whose given name is actually Milica (said MEE-lee-tsah), from the same element that renders -mila in Ludmila; behindthename says Milica was “originally a diminutive of names that began with that element.” Lida is also given as the Czech diminutive of Ludmila, and the comments on behindthename’s entry for Ludmila list Luda, Lulu, Lidka, and Lila as nicknames for it (among other more ethnic options) — Lulu and Lila seem particularly suited to today’s tastes. The DMNES has an entry for Luda, which is from the same word as the Lud- part of Ludmila, and says that Luda can be a pet form of any Slavic name beginning with that element. Could be cute?

I’m also tagging this as a possible Christmas name, since St. Ludmila’s grandson Vaclav/Wenceslaus, who she had so much influence over in terms of teaching the faith, is the King Wenceslaus from the carol “Good King Wenceslaus.” Cool, right?

What do you all think of Ludmila? Would you consider using it as either a first or a middle? Or would Mila/Milla/Lulu/Lila/Luda be more the way you’d go, if you wanted to name a little girl after this saint? Do you know anyone with this name? What do they think of it? Do they go by a nickname?

“Father in heaven, through the intercession of St. Ludmila, bless all grandparents who seek to share the faith with their grandchildren.” ❤

 

Reading round-up

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Buckle up guys, I’ve been adding to my “reading round-up” list for months now — today’s the day! I’m getting it done!

Grace told me about a NYC gathering she’d gone to called Catholic Underground, which is totally the kind of thing I would have loved when I was in college, and the name of the director:

“Of course, it was fabulous with an hour of adoration and getting to see one of the actual missionary images of Our Lady of Guadalupe. But the reason I’m emailing you is not just to tell you about a great experience but to share with you an awesome religious name I spotted. On the little flier we got walking in the door there was a nice little letter from the director of Catholic Underground, and his name is…….Br. Mark-Mary!!! How cool is that!? It’s so rare that you see men take feminine names, so it just makes me so happy to see it when it happens!“

I love that!! #MenWhoLoveMary

Emma wanted to be sure I’d seen this post (from early December) over at Swistle’s blog, saying, “Oh boy, does Swistle ever need Sancta Nomina over at her blog today!!!!” Haha! The mom writing is expecting her third, and her older two are Harriet Paloma (“Hattie”), and Hugo Campion. Ohh my! In her dilemma letter she writes things like,

“Their middle names feel (to my ears) more modern and have religious significance (“Paloma,” meaning “dove” which stands both for peace and for the Holy Spirit, “Campion,” after St. Edmund Campion)“

and

“[regarding the fact they’re considering Consuelo] I have always been fascinated by the French and Spanish-language tradition of naming children after the Virgin Mary, but using her many titles or apparition locations. English is pretty limited when it comes to honor names for the Blessed Mother. We have Mary, Marie, and some more unusual, but related, variants such as Mae, Mamie, Maren, Molly. But nothing compared with the range and diversity of the French/Spanish naming tradition: Lourdes, Carmel, Soledad, Guadalupe, Luz, Amparo, Araceli, Socorro, Belen, Pilar, Delores. And on and on! My daughter’s godmother is Monserrat after Our Lady of Monserrat (love!!).”

I would indeed have loved to get my hands on that dilemma! But this bit from Swistle sums up my feelings pretty exactly (the question was Margaret vs. Consuelo as a first name):

“Margaret Consuelo is a pretty kick-butt name, and coordinates beautifully with Harriet Paloma and Hugo Campion. Paloma (peace) and Consuelo (solace) are particularly well-matched.”

Speaking of Swistle, I also loved the sib set in this post: Charles (Huck), Isaac, Katherine, and Seth. (I love Huck for Charles!!) One of the commenters (our very own eclare!) said she guessed the family might be Catholic, based on the size of the family, the kids’ names (which she accurately described as “saint/biblical”), and some on their list (including Xavier), and I agree. I was disappointed by Swistle’s reply though — she said, “I don’t think Seth or Charlotte are saint names,” which is misleading. Seth the Patriarch (from the Old Testament) appears in Book of Saints by the Monks of Ramsgate as well as Our Sunday Visitor’s Encyclopedia of Saints, and his feast day is March 1. There are also several Blesseds Charlotte, and, as eclare correctly pointed out, Charlotte can be and is often used as an honor name for any of the Sts. Charles/Karl/Carl/Carlo/Karol.

One more Swistle post: Baby Names to Consider: Classic/Traditional Names with Atypical/Non-Traditional Nicknames. I loved reading the ideas from her and the commenters!

Shelby told me about this article: The Saint behind the Jagermeister Logo is also one of the 14 Holy Helpers. I love finding out stuff like that! As Shelby put it, it “goes well with your post about Catholic things in plain sight like the Sophie the Giraffe.” “Catholic things in plain sight”! I love that!

It reminds me of something else I read recently: Nutella Founder Dies, Said Secret of Success Was Our Lady of Lourdes: Devout Catholic took employees to visit site of Marian apparitions. Yes, Nutella is now my new favorite food. 🙂

Then there was this: A 3yo boy named Diesel will only answer to Popcorn, and so his parents are going to legally change his name.

The Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources is one of my favorite resources, and I was so struck by one of its recent blog posts about the rise of certain names in Protestant records after the Reformation that I raised a question:

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The Apocrypha in this context are the books (or parts of books, as in the case of Daniel) that are part of the Catholic bible but not part of the Protestant bible. (As opposed to books Catholics consider to be apocryphal, like the Protoevangelium of James.) It was so strange to me that Judith (the book of Judith is rejected by Protestants) and Susan (the English form of Susanna(h), from the part of the book of Daniel that’s considered apocryphal by Protestants) would receive an uptick in use by Protestants after the Reformation. So interesting! And even better — the DMNES team (including our own Sara) is on it!

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I find stuff like this so fascinating. As I said to Sara, I learn so much about culture, religious, politics, history, and language through names. I can’t wait to read what she comes up with!

I was also interested by this bit in the DMNES post on New Testament names after the Reformation, about our dear St. Anne:

“Anne: This name could be classified as either an Old Testament name or a New Testament name. In the OT, this was the name of the mother of Samuel (more often modernly transliterated as Hannah); in the apocrypha, Anne is usually identified as the mother of Mary, though she is not named explicitly in the NT. Whatever the origin and whatever the spelling, this name was always common; it was, in fact, one of the most common feminine names throughout all of Europe throughout the Middle Ages, due primarily to the early veneration of the mother of Mary. The name was so well entrenched that the Protestant turning away from the veneration of the saints did not cause any reduction in its popularity.” (emphasis mine)

How cool is that! It’s also particularly funny that its entrenchment was “due primarily to the early veneration of the mother of Mary” — not only a saint, despite “the Protestant turning away from the veneration of the saints,” but a saint who’s never named in the bible we all agree on, nor even in the apocrypha rejected by Protestantism — Mary’s mother’s name is only given in the Protoevangelium of James, so its use is totally due to Catholic tradition. She’s a great lady, that St. Anne. 🙂 ❤

Finally, I was enjoying these dilemmas on the Baby Name Wizard site recently:

Thoughts on Gemma

Bishop as a first name?

Religious or not religious? (this mom has since figured out a solution, but I really liked some of the ideas offered in this post)

(Also, I think the commenter Optatus Cleary would like it here. 🙂 )

Whew! I think that’s all I have for today!

ETA: Oh! Also this: Twitter Reveals That All Kids Hate Their Names (my takeaway: pray and do the best you can, and then don’t worry), and this: Are There Any More Z Names? Neither the author (Laura Wattenberg herself) nor any of the commenters mentioned Zelie/Azelie!

 

 

Ann or Anne?

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I posted some photos of a beautiful stained glass window depicting St. Ann(e) on Instagram earlier this evening (here and here), and found it notable that “St. Ann” was written beneath her image, and then “In memory of Mrs. Anne Quinn” — both spellings on one window.

So I asked how many prefer Ann or Anne and have gotten several responses (Anne by a landslide, which was my grandmother’s spelling, and the one Anne Shirley vastly preferred, and the spelling I always unconsciously default to, though I’m delighted that one follower let us know her middle name is Ann, which is the spelling of my best friend from growing up’s middle name, and she’s an amazing person, so — good company!). I also posted a poll to Twitter and so far everyone’s voted for Anne (three people).

I looked them up, and Anne is the “French form of ANNA. In the 13th-century it was imported to England, where it was also commonly spelled Ann.” Indeed, Ann is described as the “English form of ANNE (1). In the English-speaking world, both this spelling and Anne have been used since the Middle Ages, though Ann became much more popular during the 19th century.” I checked out the Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources to see if there was additional info, and discovered the name Tanneken! It’s a diminutive of Ann(e) — I’m loving it! It’s totally the kind of nickname/diminutive that I go nuts for.

Any of you who haven’t yet commented on IG or voted on Twitter — which spelling do you prefer and why?

Couple fun things

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I don’t know about you all, but I can’t stop crying about all the Planned Parenthood stuff — all those sweet babies — and on the one hand, I feel like it’s sort of disrespectful to think of fun, light things, like the only things we should be doing are everything we can to make it stop, but on the other, I personally don’t function well at all when I’m approaching the depths of despair, and I have a lot of people to take care of, so focusing on fun, light things is helpful. And I have a couple of them!

(1) I was sure I’d have some good name chats on my vacation, and I was right. My sisters-in-law know all sorts of people having babies, and some of the most interesting names I heard were:

— Benya (that spelling) (boy), said ben-EYE-ah. I’d seen Benia recently online for a couple (!) girls, which I’d thought was said BEN-yah, but then read that it was said ben-EYE-ah, so when my SIL told me about Benya I assumed it was for a girl, but no. I looked it up, and found this:

“Given Name BENAIAH

GENDER: Masculine
USAGE: Biblical
OTHER SCRIPTS: בְּנָיָהוּ (Ancient Hebrew)
PRONOUNCED: bi-NIE-ə (English), bi-NAY-ə (English)   [key]
Meaning & History
From the Hebrew name בְּנָיָהוּ (Benayahu) meaning “YAHWEH has built”. This was the name of numerous Old Testament characters.
OTHER LANGUAGES: Benayahu (Biblical Hebrew)“
Do any of you know any more about this name, or know anyone (boy or girl) so named?

— Traigh (boy), said TRAY. I feel like I’m pretty up on Irish names, but I’d never heard this one! There wasn’t much to find on it, but I did find this:

“The name Traigh is a baby boy name.

Irish Meaning:
The name Traigh is an Irish baby name. In Irish the meaning of the name Traigh is: Strand.“

I don’t even know what’s meant by “strand”? Like strand of hair? Like to strand on the side of the road? I do love the sound and spelling. Do you know any Traighs?

— Olive (all the rage right now!), Walter (on a tiny baby! sooo cute!), Lennon (so hipster!), Joy (as a middle name, I love it!)

(2) I posted about my consultation for Marci and her husband back in May — her baby has arrived! Go take a look at that beautifully named baby girl! It’s an awesome post — lots of birth story info and lots of name info, since they didn’t decide on her name until the next day, and Marci said she was surprised by what they ended up with. (It’s lovely!)

(3) The feast of Sts. Anne and Joachim was the Sunday I was away, July 26. My mom took this picture for me in one of the churches she visited:

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and I saw this and this online on the feast day also (from here and here, respectively). Beautiful! And I’ve heard from a few different readers that St. Anne has been powerfully interceding in their lives. What a blessing to have her as a patron saint!!

My boys have let me know that my time on the computer is up and they are “staaarving” so I’m off to make lunch — we’ll chat more tomorrow! 🙂 ❤

A quick pop-in (& Laudato Si’ reflection at CatholicMom.com)

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I hope you all had a great week! Our vacation is best explained by the fact that my boys are counting the days until we go back (we’re tentatively planning a similar trip in Summer 2017 so they have a lot of days to count). We actually did really great! And it was basically as I’d thought — we needed the same things for the week as we do for an overnight (pack and play, diapers and wipes galore, bathing suits, beach towels, sippy cups, clean clothes, paper/crayons, etc.), with the sole addition of a few more clothes and underwear.

I’ll be spending the next few days catching up on email, and I had some really fun name convos (thank you sisters and sisters-in-law and Mother dear!) and spotted some great names (a couple of which I posted about on Instagram), and encountered some sobering name info, all of which I’ll tell you about in upcoming posts. I’ll have a consultation posted tomorrow morning as usual, and some birth announcements to share as well. August is off and running!!

But my real reason for breaking my Sunday blog-fast and popping in here is to direct you to the CatholicMom.com Laudato Si’: A Community Conversation reflection on Chapter 3, which I’d mentioned recently. Every Sunday for eight weeks two CatholicMom.com writers will offer short reflections on their assigned chapter. This week is Chapter 3, and I have the privilege of being one of today’s writers. It’s not name-related, but I hope you’ll hop over there anyway, and maybe even leave a comment. Reading my one chapter — which is all that I’ve read of Laudato Si’ so far — was amazing; as I told friends, it was hard for me to imagine what Pope Francis could have possibly written about in the other chapters, so chock-full was Chapter 3.

Alrighty, I’m signing off until tomorrow!

 

A few things before we *gasp* leave on vacation

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I’m terribly sorry for neglecting you all yesterday! I meant to post and the day just got away from me. If you can believe it, especially after my St. Anne’s Shrine post in which I emphatically declared that traveling with little ones is very low on my list of things that I’m willing to do, I am getting us all ready to go away for a week with my parents, siblings, their spouses, and their kiddos. We leave tomorrow. I know.

We’ve never done anything like this before, but the opportunity to be all together for a whole week — which hasn’t happened in at least … seven years? I think? Maybe longer? was certainly not something to be passed up. My boys will be seeing the ocean for the first time, which we’re all excited about, and hanging out with their cousins (also all boys), which we’re all excited about too. We’re staying in one big house (all twenty of us) that has a washer and dryer and kitchen, so I’m actually not stressing too much about it at all. I feel like I really don’t have to do much more than I had to do for the overnight we did at my mother-in-law’s house last weekend. Maybe a few more clothes? I’ll let you know next week if I was right. 😉

In the meantime, I wanted to assure you that I will have a consultation posted on Monday — WordPress has the handy feature of deciding when posts post, so I’ll write it up before I leave and schedule it to post Monday morning. I don’t know if I’ll have internet access or not — I’m assuming I will, at least occasionally — which only means that I might not be able to approve comments from people who have never commented before, and that I’m not planning any posts for next week.

But I’ll be back with a vengeance after that! Hopefully I’ll have spotted some great names or had some great name conversations (my sisters and sisters-in-law are good like that) that I can tell you about, and there are some upcoming births I’m excited about (Jenny Uebbing I’m looking at you!), and a couple other things I want to blog about, so August will be fun.

I hope you all have a wonderful week! And I’ll leave you with this, which is exactly the kind of thing I thought I’d find when I was writing my middle names article for CatholicMom.com (I didn’t find it though, and Barb only tweeted this to me after my article posted). I’m fascinated by this — have any of you had this experience or know someone who has?

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St. Anne giveaway #9 — The End

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I just posted the pic of the very last of the St. Anne giveaways — a holy card of the Shrine with medal and shrine info on the back. I have four, so the first four who email me at sanctanomina@gmail.com will get them!

Thanks again for celebrating my first blogiversary with me! You’re all wonderful!! ❤

St. Anne giveaway #8

sanctanomina Housekeeping

I just posted the pic of today’s giveaway — a holy card of the St. Anne’s Shrine with a medal and prayer on the back. I have four, so the first four who email me at sanctanomina@gmail.com get them!

I’m on my way out (to teach NFP of all things! Please pray for the couple I’m teaching), so I won’t be able to check email until later tonight … I’ll email back the winners then!