26 July Memorial
According to some of the apocryphal traditions, Joachim was a very wealthy and generous man. However, he and his wife, Anne, were childless until they were advanced in years. One day, before Anne conceived Mary, Joachim arrived at the Temple to make an offering. It was rejected by a man named Rubim, most likely a Levitical priest, because Joachim was childless. Rubim rebuked Joachim for bringing offerings before he had a child. Children were exceedingly important at that time and someone childless was seen as in disfavor with God.
Distressed, Joachim left the Temple and studied the Scriptures to see if he could find anyone of importance who, like he and Anne, were childless. When he came upon Abraham, he recalled that Abraham was only given a child in his old age. Rather than returning home to Anne, Joachim embarked on a forty-day period of fasting and praying in the desert, beseeching God for a child.
Anne, for her part, also went to pray, asking God for a child. As she prayed, an angel appeared to her and communicated that God had heard her prayer and she would have a child who “will be spoken in all the world.” An second messenger from God appeared to Joachim and assured him that God had heard his prayer and that his wife would conceive. Nine months later, the child arrived and was names Mary.
Because of a vow Anne and Joachim had made, when Mary was only three, they brought her to the Temple where she took up residence until it was time for her to be married. She was educated by the priests and holy women and spent her days in prayer and union with God.
Though this story of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s birth and presentation in the Temple comes from apocryphal sources, the Presentation of Mary in the Temple is a liturgical feast first celebrated in the Eastern Church as early as the sixth century and the Western Church in the eleventh century. In the old city of Jerusalem, there still stands an ancient church next to the Temple Mount in which it is believed that the Blessed Virgin Mary was born and might have lived during her early days after being presented in the Temple.
Though not much more is known about Saints Joachim and Anne, devotion to them, especially to Saint Anne, began to grow as early as the sixth century. Churches were built in her honor, prayers were offered for her intercession, devotions were formulated, and patronages were attributed to her. It wasn’t until the sixteenth century that devotion to Saint Joachim began to grow when his feast day was placed on the General Roman Calendar.
St. Anne is now the patron saint of grandparents, grandmothers, mothers, cabinetmakers, carpenters, dressmakers, equestrians, expectant mothers, homemakers, housewives, lace workers, seamstresses, miners, old-clothes dealers, Canada, and France. Saint Joachim is also patron saint of grandparents as well as grandfathers, fathers, married couples, cabinetmakers, and linen traders.
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