Annual St. Ann Novena ends, a lesson in trusting the faith prevails

Bella Bailey

Multimedia Correspondent

St. Ann Mission, Covington, celebrated the end of their 139th annual St. Ann Novena with Mass, celebrated by Father Gerald Rienersman, a retired priest of the Diocese of Covington, and veneration of the relics of St. Ann. Many participated with a kiss or touch of the relic, an emotional moment venerating the saint to which they have prayed for the past nine days.

On each of the nine days, a Mass was celebrated following the novena prayer at St. Ann Mission. This year, each Mass was dedicated to an apparition of the Blessed Mother. Some known, such as the Our Lady of Fatima and Our Lady of Guadalupe apparitions, while others were lesser known, including Our Lady of Siluva which was the apparition for the final night of the Novena.

The story of our Lady of Siluva begins many years before Our Lady’s apparition in 1608, rather the seeds were sown for her appearance amidst the rise of the protestant reformation. When the town officials of Siluva, Lithuania, turned to Calvinism they sought to destroy the small Catholic Church of Lithuania and reappropriate the land to protestant worship. The priest of the Siluvan Catholic Church heard of this and took the deeds to the land, liturgical vestments and a painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary and placed them in a box which he buried on the Church property. Soon after, the land and the Church were seized, and Catholic worship in Lithuania was replaced with Protestantism.

“The Church was destroyed, and the land was used for farmland, and the faith was buried,” said Father Reinersman in his homily on the apparition. Then, nearly 80 years later, a group of children were playing in a field when the Blessed Virgin appeared to them weeping, holding a small child. Though she did not say anything to the children, word spread throughout the village and the next day a large crowd had formed near the site of the apparition. She appeared again and said to them, “once my beloved son was worshiped here, but now it was given over to the plowman and to the sower,” Father Reinersman said, paraphrasing.

As word of the apparition spread, a blind man in the outskirts of the town remembered the buried box. “He led people to this spot, and when he reached this spot, he regained his sight,” said Father Reinersman, “He was able to see what was precious, and he found this place where the church once stood, and to a spot where an iron box was buried in this field.”

“For eighty years it stayed buried, silent and unused. The treasures in that box were the chalices that had been used at Mass, the missal books, the vestments, an image of the Blessed Mother and the documents that showed the Church owned the land,” said Father Reinersman.

“So, even when faith is buried, it is never gone. When the world forgets, Heaven remembers. And, when the sacred is erased, the Blessed Mother comes to restore it,” he said, “the Blessed Mother leads up back to find what is sacred, to find what is holy, to find what is precious. The gift of faith and an active spiritual life develops an instinct, and an appreciation and a wisdom that helps us to see the hand of God in our world.”