Day: July 26, 2017

Saint/s of the Day – 26 July – Sts Joachim and Anne – Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary

St Anne – Name Meaning:  gracious one; grace.   Patronages – against poverty, against sterility or infertility, of broommakers, cabinetmakers, carpenters, childless people, equestrians, expectant mothers; pregnant women,  grandmothers, grandparents,
horse men and women, housewives; homemakers, lace makers or workers, lost articles,
miners, mothers, old-clothes dealers, poor people, seamstresses, stablemen, turners,
Canada, France, 4 dioceses, 18 cities.

St Joachim – Name Meaning: God prepares, May God exalt.  Patronages – Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, fathers, grandfathers, grandparents.   The traditional tomb of Saint Anne and Saint Joachim was rediscovered in Jerusalem in 1889.

All our information concerning the names and lives of Sts Joachim and Anne, the parents of Mary, is derived from apocryphal literature, the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Protoevangelium of James.   Though the earliest form of the latter, on which directly or indirectly the other two seem to be based, goes back to about A.D. 150, we can hardly accept as beyond doubt its various statements on its sole authority.   In the Orient the Protoevangelium had great authority and portions of it were read on the feasts of Mary by the Greeks, Syrians, Copts, and Arabians.   In the Occident, however, it was rejected by the Fathers of the Church until its contents were incorporated by Jacobus de Voragine in his “Golden Legend” in the thirteenth century. From that time on the story of St. Anne spread over the West and was amply developed, until St. Anne became one of the most popular saints also of the Latin Church.

The Protoevangelium gives the following account:   In Nazareth there lived a rich and pious couple, Joachim and Hannah.   They were childless.   When on a feast day Joachim presented himself to offer sacrifice in the temple, he was repulsed by a certain Ruben, under the pretext that men without offspring were unworthy to be admitted. Whereupon Joachim, bowed down with grief, did not return home, but went into the mountains to make his plaint to God in solitude.   Also Hannah, having learned the reason of the prolonged absence of her husband, cried to the Lord to take away from her the curse of sterility, promising to dedicate her child to the service of God.   Their prayers were heard; an angel came to Hannah and said:  “Hannah, the Lord has looked upon thy tears;  thou shalt conceive and give birth and the fruit of thy womb shall be blessed by all the world”.   The angel made the same promise to Joachim, who returned to his wife. Hannah gave birth to a daughter whom she called Miriam (Mary).   Since this story is apparently a reproduction of the biblical account of the conception of Samuel, whose mother was also called Hannah, even the name of the mother of Mary seems to be doubtful.

In the Latin Church St. Anne was not venerated, except, perhaps, in the south of France, before the thirteenth century.   Her picture, painted in the eighth century, which was found lately in the church of Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome, owes its origin to Byzantine influence.   Her feast, under the influence of the “Golden Legend”, is first found (26 July) in the thirteenth century, e.g. at Douai (in 1291), where a foot of St. Anne was venerated (feast of translation, 16 September).   It was introduced in England by Urban VI, 21 November, 1378, from which time it spread all over the Western Church.   It was extended to the universal Latin Church in 1584.

A little interesting snippet – St Anne is patroness of miners because Christ being compared to gold, Mary to silver.