Sts. Anne and Joachim (1st century)Feast day: July
26 Grandchildren are a gift from God. Of all
grandparents, the most highly blessed were St. Anne and St.
Joachim, whose grandson was Jesus Christ. The Gospels make no
mention of the Blessed Virgin Mary?s parents, but the
Protoevangelium of James, an apocryphal work written about
150, gives us a complete story of Sts. Anne and Joachim. Even
in the early centuries of the Church, the Fathers could not
sort out what was legendary in this book from what (if
anything) was true. Obviously the Blessed Virgin Mary had
parents. Considering the extraordinary graces God bestowed
upon Mary, it stands to reason that her mother and father
were also greatly loved by God. More than that, no one can
say with certainty. What follows, then, is the legend of Sts.
Anne and Joachim. Their home was in Jerusalem, and although
they had lived long and happily together Anne and Joachim
grieved that they had no children. One day when he brought an
offering to the Temple a fellow worshipper named Ruben mocked
Joachim saying anyone who had not added to the number of the
people of Israel by producing children had no business making
sacrifices. Anguished and humiliated, Joachim went out to the
desert where he fasted and prayed for 40 days, begging God to
bless him and Anne with a child. Suddenly an angel came down
from heaven and said, "Joachim! The Lord has heard your
prayer. Go home, for your wife Anne shall conceive."
Meanwhile Anne was venting her grief in her garden when an
angel appeared to her. "Anne! Anne! You shall conceive," he
said, "and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world." In
her eagerness to share this news with Joachim, Anne left her
garden and stood at the city gate waiting for her husband.
When she saw him in the distance she hurried out to meet him
and kissed him. "Now I know the Lord God has blessed me
exceedingly," she said. "I the childless shall conceive."
Nine months later Anne gave birth to an infant girl whom she
named Mary. When Mary was 3 years old, Anne and Joachim led
her to the Temple and offered her to the Lord. Mary remained
in the Temple until she was betrothed to Joseph. The cult of
St. Anne began in the East. It was already well established
by 550 when the Emperor Justinian built a church in her honor
in Constantinople. Devotion to St. Joachim developed more
slowly, but by the eighth century he was venerated in both
the East and the West. It is interesting to note that the
feast of the Immaculate Conception, which celebrates the day
Our Lady was conceived in the womb of her mother, was
originally known as the feast of the Conception of St. Anne.
In Europe St. Anne?s primary shrine is at Auray in Brittany,
which claims to possess her relics, while
Ste.-Anne-de-Beaupre in Canada?s Quebec Province is the great
center of devotion to Our Lord?s grandmother in the New
World. Today in Jerusalem the Church of St. Anne stands near
St. Stephen?s Gate. Archaeologists have excavated beneath the
church and found the remains of what appears to be a house.
Whether it was the home of St. Anne, St. Joachim and their
holy child Mary, we will never know. Craughwell is the
author of Saints for Every Occasion (Stampley
Enterprises, 2001) and Patron Saints Catholic Cardlinks
(Our Sunday Visitor, 2004).
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