Wednesday in the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 26, 2023

The Feast of Saints Joachim and Anne

Matthew 13, 16-17

Jesus said to his disciples: “Blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

According to the very early Christian text dating back to 100-150 A.D. which is called the Proto-Evangelium or Proto-Gospel of James, the names of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s parents were Joachim and Anne.  They were an older, childless couple who very much wanted children.  In his grief, Joachim left home and vowed not to return there or to eat and drink until the Lord heard his prayer.  Very movingly, he said, “My food and drink will be prayer.”  In his good time, God sent an angel to Joachim to tell him that he and his wife would become the parents of a daughter while a second angel told this to Anne.  After making sacrifices in gratitude, Joachim came home: “And, behold, Joachim came with his flocks; and Anna stood by the gate, and saw Joachim coming, and she ran and hung upon his neck, saying: Now I know that the Lord God has blessed me exceedingly; for, behold the widow no longer a widow, and I the childless shall conceive. And Joachim rested the first day in his house.”  The text goes on to tell of the birth of Mary and how Joachim and Anne brought her to the Temple at an early age to live with the holy women who dwelled there.

While not everything reported in this text, which the Church Fathers did not accept as Scriptural, can be trusted as authentic, certain things can which are attested by other sources.  For instance, the names of the parents, their advanced age, and the dedication of Mary in the Temple.  We can surmise other details about them: that they lived in Nazareth of Galilee, that they were devout Jews, that Joachim was a workingman devotion to the, spread early and quickly in the eastern churches through the wide dissemination of the Proto-Gospel, but it was not until it became known in the Middle Ages that we find devotion to them in the West, but the devotion proved strong and abiding.  One of the first churches built in North America was dedicated to St. Anne, and is now a basilica known as St. Anne de Beaupré.  A million pilgrims make their way to it each year in hopes of obtaining St. Anne’s intercession.  A great abundance of miracles have occurred there — very many instantaneous healings.  There are walls within the basilica on which hang crutches, wheelchairs, eyeglasses, and other aids to the suffering which were left by those who were cured.  It is a very beautiful and moving place, at once a great testimony to the faith of the French people who moved to the New World in the 1600’s and to the love of God for those drawn to him through these saints.

“Blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear.”  In the Gospel Reading for the Feast of St. Joachim and St. Anne, the Lord speaks of those who believed and hoped that the Savior would come.  He commends those who do see and hear him.  He means this not only in terms of what is visual and auditory, but in terms of understanding, believing, and obeying.  He also means this not only for those who saw and heard him at that time but for those of us alive now who see him with they eyes of faith and hear his words in the Gospels.  We are most blessed if we, like those before us, not only hear his words but understand, believe, and obey them.  “Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”  About 1,500 years separate the time of Abraham to the time of Jesus, and no one can say how many years there were from Adam to Abraham.  So many people lived and died in those times yearning for deliverance from sin that was not merely prefigured in the sacrifices of animals but accomplished in reality.  So many awaited the New Israel and the New Covenant prophesied by Jeremiah: “Jeremiah 31:31–34 (D-R): Behold the days shall come, says the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, the covenant which they made void [through their idolatry], and I had dominion over them, says the Lord. 

But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, says the Lord: I will give my law in their inmost being, and I will write it in their heart: and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying: Know the Lord — for all shall know me from the least of them even to the greatest, says the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31, 31-34).  The Lord Jesus made this new covenant in his Blood, which we partake of at Holy Mass and by doing so pledge our commitment to it.  We pray that God will bestow on us a spirit of gratitude that we live in these days when we may know the fullness of his love for us through his Son Jesus.