Happy St Anne Feast Day! - 3

Prayer time around St Anne's statue in the evening...

Here is our French-Canadian Pea Soup! Delicious! The only thing extra I added to the recipe was to stir in some Creme Fraiche (so French!) to make it extra creamy. The children loved it as well.
Can't have a feast without a nice bottle...especially if you are celebrating with the French. One for the children (non-alcoholic) and a nice drop of Fruitwood (sweet and fruity) for dh and I.

Cheers to St Anne!
Fruit pies are a sweet that is appropriate for the feast of St Anne in many parts of the world, so I made my apple and berries pie. I chop up 6-7 apples, throw in 250-300grams of frozen forest berries, a cup of sugar. I cook it up in a saucepan and take some of the juice and add it to a cup containing two tablespoons of arrowroot powder, mix it together and add back to the fruit.

I pour the fruit mix into a pie dish (I use pre-made butter pastry) and add the top and cook at 200 degrees (Aus measurements) for 40mins.

I used my alphabet cut-outs to make the name, "Anne" on the pie.

We would normally serve our pies with cream but for a feast day treat I bought some ice-cream....French vanilla flavour, of course!

Someone was lucky to get the piece with the letter 'A' on it.

One piece left with some extra fruit mixture...

I have such joy in my heart of late. We got back from WYD in Sydney on Tuesday evening, we only spent a few days down there due to a lot of challenges and problems in the week of WYD. We were going to leave Wed but one son twisted his ankle, another son got stung by a bee and had an extreme reaction for a day or so.

We wanted to leave Thurs but I woke up with bad pains and went to emergency for over half a day - 2 x-rays and 1 CT scan latter I found out that I had badly strained/inflamed a ligament along the left side of my body. We thought our chance was over, even though the emergency trip turned out well...but I then received a call from a dear friend who had faced her own struggles getting down to Sydney. We were thinking of travelling with them but both of us kept experiencing delays...they finally left early Thurs morning, drove into Sydney in the late afternoon, made a frantic dash to St Mary's Cathedral in the dim hope of being able to park and see the motorcade and they found a park very close by! (everything was cordoned off, I don't know how they did it...) and Elizabeth rang to say she was standing at St Mary's Cathedral, anything could happen even when things seem to be going wrong.

That call did it - we left early the next morning (Fri) our trip is a story in itself. I will write about it soon with our photos but I was unwell when we arrived so we were unable to get to the Papal Mass. We watched it on TV instead. It seemed that even though we were in the same city as the Holy Father, we wouldn't see him...I had peace though. God's will be done.

St Anne was holding my hand through it all. I was so anxious about being ill after all the health scares in the family in the previous days..we were going to a different city, not knowing where hospitals were and going into colder weather in winter...I must have prayed 50 or more St Anne chaplets on the 12 hour trip down...praying for all the concerns in my heart, I would just call upon her and trust her - all would be well.

On the Sunday evening after the Final Papal Mass, I got on the internet and checked to see what the Holy Father would be doing on the day he was due to fly out. I discovered that he would be travelling by popemobile from St Mary's Cathedral House (where Cardinal Pell lives) to the Domain (the gardens behind the Cathedral) where he would briefly thank the volunteers - a short 5min trip on the itinerary list and I had a faint hope we might be able to see the Holy Father between the two venues before he was to fly out mid morning.

We decided to head out early the next morning (6.30am) to drive into the heart of the city for the 8.45am short motorcade. We offered a St Anne chaplet, and between the Hail Mary's we said, "Jesus, Mary and St Anne, please keep us well and let us see the Holy Father."

We were blessed to have found a free parking space next to Hyde Park but discovered that the streets around the Cathedral were blocked off completely...my heart sank. But we continued to walk through Hyde Park with the Cathedral in view, hoping that we could find somewhere where we could see the Holy Father. There were volunteers walking in a certain direction, we followed.

Dh saw some volunteers directing others down a particular path, so he asked them where to go to see the Holy Father. We were told that you would only see the Holy Father if we had tickets to the Volunteer's gathering in the Domain. The lady asked whether we had any and we said we didn't. The only way to get in was with them...next moment she started handing us out some tickets!!! We were so delighted!

As we headed down, my husband turned back to look at the volunteers who had given the tickets...they were gone. It was such a small window of opportunity to have received them. We had forgotten to bring our camera that morning - that morning of all mornings, and when we discovered this 10mins into our drive we had considered turning around and going back to get it...but decided against it in the end...thank goodness, we would never have received the tickets if we had.

As I mentioned we didn't bring our camera but I found a great site that had photos of the event we attended so I have posted some of the pictures from this site. HT: Holy Father's Images

We entered the special area with the stage for the Holy Father, and sure enough, you could not have gotten in without those tickets..security was very tight as well. This was a very small affair compared to every other public event for the Holy Father, only 8 thousand people compared to 100's of thousands in the days past.

We were standing central to the stage and the Holy Father's chair, about 30metres back, with a very clear view.
When the popemobil finally entered the area we went to the barricades behind us and suddenly I heard calls, "He is kissing a baby! Quick where is a baby?" People along the rails could see that the Holy Father had stopped the popemobile to kiss a baby about 20 meters back and they wanted a baby near them in case he would stop again....there were hardly any children at the event as it was for the volunteers, so they saw our family and pulled us all to the front along the rails...next 10 seconds...the Holy Father passed, 1-2meters away from us, looking directly at us... He then went on to give his speech, we could see him clearly, we soaked up the wonderful occasion, on that beautiful Monday morning, we will never, never forget it.

All I could think was, "St Anne, you are simply awesome."

Later that afternoon we went to Watson's Bay where Fr Antoine (Children's Eucharistic Adoration) was, leading the children in a beautiful Holy Hour followed by Mass. As I was walking around the back of the church with a fussy baby, I looked up and saw the statue of St Anne...statues of St Anne are a rarity in churches these days, but here was one...it further consolidated in my heart and mind that this blessed day was all that it was, thanks to the powerful love and intercession of St Anne, my loving, heavenly grandmother.