Friday in the 16th Week of Ordinary Time, July 26, 2024

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.”

The Blessed Virgin Mary did not receive many instructions for what to do after she conceived the Son of God in her womb.  She was not told where her Son should be born, where or how he should be raised, or what to expect from him that would distinguish him from all the other children who had ever lived.  Similarly, the parents of the Virgin Mary would have known little of how to raise their daughter Mary, conceived without original sin in the womb of her mother Anne.  The early traditions contained in the so-called Proto-Gospel of James, probably written in the early 100’s, tell us that an angel announced to Mary’s parents, whose names are given as Joachim and Anne, that they would become the parents of a child who would be known through the whole world.  That was all.  They were left on their own as to whether the child would be a boy or a girl, where the child should be born, how raised, and in what way the child would fulfill the prophecy of the angel.  

They were simple folks, this couple.  The Proto-Gospel makes Joachim a rich man, but this seems unlikely.  More likely is that he was rich in faith, together with his wife.  They had grown old together though without the blessing of children such as all their relatives and friends had received, despite their piety.  They did not blame God for their lack of fertility but continued to practice their religion.  And when Anne learned from the Angel that she would have a child, her first thought was not to brag of this to her neighbors or to claim any credit for herself but to give the child to the service of Almighty God.

We do not hear anything more of them from tradition after Mary is married to Joseph.  Presumably they rested from their labors in the place of the dead until the Lord Jesus greeted them there after he died on the Cross and came down to lead them and the rest of the just to heaven.

The Lord’s words in the Gospel remind us of the intense yearning the just felt for the coming of their Savior: “As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42, 1-2).  How we who know the Lord Jesus through the Scriptures and the Sacraments and in prayer should yearn for the everlasting hills of heaven and the Lord’s tender embrace (cf. Genesis 49, 26)!