Having been raised in the Parish of Saint Joachim, today’s feast is very dear to me. Today the Church honors Saints Joachim and Anne, a married couple, parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the grandparents of our Blessed Lord, and lest we forget, the “in-laws” of St. Joseph. I began to emphasize the importance of “in-laws” ever since I read a plaque my brother in law hung in his kitchen: “The difference between in-laws and outlaws is that outlaws are wanted.” My sister made sure it didn’t hang there for very long! St. Joseph would never have carved such a plaque!
Sacred Scripture gives us not a word about Saints Joachim and Anne. The Church relies on tradition that comes down to us in a document called the “Protoevangelium of Saint James.” It tells us that Joachim and Anne were wealthy, pious, and generous to the poor. But they were childless. In their culture, this was a sign of God’s disfavor, a source of shame and sorrow.
This shame led St. Joachim into the desert to pray for the grace of a child. Anne remained home and joined her prayers to his. In a dream an angel revealed to them both that their prayers would be answered. Their daughter, Mary was called a “child of promise.” The tradition goes on to relate how Joachim and Anne presented Mary in the temple as a young child where she was consecrated to God’s service.
This is the tradition, but whether these details are accurate or not, who is going to deny the title of “saint” to the parents of the Blesed Virgin Mary and the grandparents of Jesus? We honor them because they were the parents who nurtured, taught, and helped Mary to respond with faith to that turning point in history, the Annunciation.
Their lofty rank in the annuals of the saints may cause them to appear far removed from our own experience. But the remarkable thing about saints is that they were not sinless.
They entered the world as human, ennobled or disfigured as the rest of us. They lost their tempers, got hungry. They could be egotistical, irritable, and impatient. Saints, they stumbled along and made mistakes.
The key to their holiness was that they repented, they got up each time and persevered in their journey. They kept their eyes on God, never losing their trust that God was present in every circumstance. When problems overwhelm us we can despair. Our faith and trust can be shaken.
We wonder if we can “keep it together.” Fr. Henri Nouwen reminds us: “We can only keep it together when we believe that God holds us together, when we remain faithful to the truth that every little part of us, every hair is completely safe in the divine embrace of our Lord.”
Today we look to Joachim and Anne who understood this in the depth of their being. May they intercede for us, and that we might understand it as well.
