My family used to often go on vacation to Jasper when I was a young man. We would sometimes stay at Patricia Lake at the foot of Pyramid Mountain. My mother was always so excited to get out of the city and be in the mountains. She had a special love for that lake.
My mom was the first one up as soon as the sun was rising. She would shower quietly, make her coffee, and then take it down to sit by the lake when all was especially still and the rest of us were asleep. She loved to just sit there quietly with the splendour of God all around her. I think she could sense the nearness of God in the beauty of creation. Creation is a quiet but living witness to the One who made it.
There is a beautiful Cree water song by a Northern Alberta artist Sherryl Sewepagaham called “Nipîy” (Water). Its words say in the language of the Nehiyawak people: “I am here. / I sit beside the water. / I touch you. / I hear you. / I see you. / I am here. / I sit quietly.”[1] ôtah nîyayân. pah-pîyahtak nitapin. I am here. I sit quietly.
Sometimes I would get up just after my mom and follow her as soon as I could to this special spot where she would sit by the lake, and after she would finish her coffee, we might go for a little walk around the cool waters. I remember the squirrels that used to throw pine cones at us to shoo us away if we got too close to their tree!
I learned very quickly to love what she loved, to see what she saw in that holy place. The morning mist or fog hovering mysteriously over the lake. The lonely sound of the loons that liked to nest there. If we were quiet, we would sometimes see the mother loon giving her little ones a ride on her back, to give them a rest as they were learning to swim, or perhaps to give them the joy of the closeness to their mother. What child doesn’t like to be given a ride on mom or dad’s back?
As I understand, water songs are often sung by women in Indigenous cultures because women bring life with birth waters in their womb. Mothers and water; grandmothers and water.
We humans can’t live without water. You and I are about 60% water at any given moment! Scientists tell us today what our ancestors taught us: “Ecosystems are 100% dependent on water … Water is the fundamental molecule that drives all biological life, shapes physical environments, and connects every living organism on Earth.” Everything is in a living relationship with water so, in Indigenous culture, water is honoured as a grandmother who gives us life. Water is honoured with song and, by doing so, we acknowledge a sacred responsibility to preserve water for future generations. Art Napoleon, in his “Water Prayer Song,”[2] says simply, “Treat the water as sacred and all will be taken care of.”
I’m not sure how many lakes in Canada were given the name Manitou Lake, Spirit Lake/God Lake, like Lac Sainte Anne, the great sacred lake which we touch and sit beside here at our annual pilgrimage! It was here at this already sacred lake that the kokum of the Lord Jesus appeared to our ancestors. God’s Son, Jesus, had a holy human mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Immaculate Mary. Saint Anne and Saint Joachim were the parents of Mary. Although the Bible doesn’t say anything about Mary’s parents, the earliest tradition of the Church remembered and handed on their names to us: Anne, Joachim.
God sometimes permits Saints to appear to us for special reasons. Our pilgrimage here every year to Lac Sainte Anne is a reminder of how God sent the grandmother of Jesus to the peoples of this land and to sing her water song over God’s lake. Saint Anne teaches us to honour and find healing in the holy waters that fill this place and that have also been falling abundantly from heaven this summer! Anne as a dear grandmother teaches us to honour the gifts of God and the ways of God that she learned from her ancestors and which prepare our hearts to receive the greatest gift of God, His Son Jesus Christ.
As you know, in our Christian tradition, water is also revered and honoured. The Scriptures teach us that the Spirit of God hovered over the waters at the beginnings of creation. God saved our ancestors in faith (the Jewish People) from slavery through the waters of the Red Sea. God’s Son, Jesus, used water as a sign of repentance, of His own death and resurrection, and the giving of the Holy Spirit. But waters can be dangerous places too. Grandmothers teach little ones to respect the water because it can be deep. We humans need water to live but we cannot live for long underneath the water. Jesus spoke of his dying on the Cross as His baptism, His ‘going under the water,’ His drowning, his death. Jesus probably died of suffocation on the Cross as His lungs slowly filled up with fluid due to his injuries.
Our Catholic Christian tradition uses water in baptism to signify and give us a share in the dying and rising of Jesus. The Sacrament of Baptism fills us with new life in God as beloved sons and daughters. God heals our body and spirit through the life that comes from His Son Jesus and His water-gift of the Cross. That’s why when we enter a church, we take holy water and make the sign of the Cross as a reminder of our baptism, asking God to renew that gift. When we come on pilgrimage to this Manitou Lake, Lac Ste Anne, we come to “sit beside the water” for some time. In our hearts we sing the words to the Spirit of God who hovers over the waters and in the waters: “I touch you. / I hear you. / I see you. / I am here. / I sit quietly.” We come to pray, to talk, to sit with our grandmother and tell her our troubles, the things we need help with or ask for advice. Saint Anne sings a water song whose last verses are about her grandson, God’s Son, and the water of God that is poured out specifically from Him. New life, eternal life, forgiveness, healing of body and soul, joy, strength to do good and commit to a holier, healthier way of life for our sake, for our children and grandchildren.
In our first reading, Sirach tells us that the role of our ancestors and grandparents is to show us a godly way of life, a life where we walk in the beauty of the Spirit. They leave us an inheritance that is a teaching, much more than money or goods. They show us how to live according to the Covenant that God made with all humanity through his Son Jesus. Sirach says “their descendants stand by the covenants.” Our ancestors adopted God’s Son Jesus into our families and, even more, he adopted us as sons and daughters of God through His baptism. In becoming human, Jesus became a Cree man, a Nakota-Sioux, a Métis, and a man of every tribe and nation. He did not come to take away your Cree-ness or Saulteaux-ness, or to take away the wisdom God had already handed on the Indigenous peoples of this land. He came from God, to tell all nations more about God, to be God in the flesh, to walk with us: to fulfill and raise up, not to destroy.
I think we are learning this more and more in the Church. This pilgrimage is a wonderful expression of how God comes to earth to make himself known in the Spirit Lake, in the lake where Jesus’ grandmother appeared to show us that it is also His water, His lake. When we immerse ourselves in God’s sacred water now, we can do so in faith in the Son of God who went under the waters of death for us, to find us, and carry us to the surface, to breathe new life into our lungs: cleansed, alive forever in Christ our Saviour.
Dear Brothers and Sisters, as we come to the sacred waters of this lake during these days in honour of Saint Anne, we all come for different reasons but we come together as family. May we take time to sit, alone and together, with our grandmother and try to see what she sees: to touch the mystery of the God who loves us, to hear God’s word for my life today, to see and believe what Jesus teaches. Our response, our prayer, may be simply: “I am here.” Jesus said to His disciples: “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears for they hear.” pah-pîyahtak nitapin. I am here. I sit quietly.
✠ Most Rev. Stephen A. Hero
Archbishop of Edmonton
Lac Ste. Anne
July 22, 2026
Sign up for The WINDOW, the weekly electronic bulletin with news from the Archdiocese of Edmonton
Read more about vocations in the Archdiocese of Edmonton
