It is a dogma of faith that Mary the mother of God-Made-Man was herself conceived and born immaculate - that is, untainted in soul by the stain of original sin that has marked the souls of all other human beings since Adam’s fall. Some devout Catholics of yore thought it appropriate to theorize that Mary herself was not conceived in the normal way, but by a virginal conception like that of Jesus. Catholic devotion to SS. Anne and Joachim overrules this mistaken piety. In honoring them as the true grandparents of Jesus, it implies that Mary was begotten in the manner that God established for the human race. The gospels tell us nothing about Mary’s parents. Not even their names. Practically everything that tradition says about them comes from a second century “imitation” gospel called the “Proto-gospel of James.” In the early Church, there was some difficulty about sorting out true books of the New Testament from counterfeits written in scriptural style for one purpose or another. The most respectable of these “pseudo-scriptures” is the Proto-gospel of James. If it is not accepted as a bible book, it quite likely does record some actual traditions about Our Lady.
According to the Proto-gospel, Mary’s parents had the names we give them today - Anne and Joachim. They are said to have been rich and pious citizens of Nazareth. But they were also childless, in a civilization in which childlessness was considered a stigma. Grieving over their sterility, Joachim withdrew to the desert to pray. Anne (i.e. Hannah, which means “grace”) remained at home; but she also prayed for a child, promising to give over any offspring to God for His own service. To each of them an angel now appeared. Their plea has been granted, he said: when they reunited, Anne would conceive a girl. The prediction was fulfilled. The parents called her Mary (i.e. Miriam).
Popular Christian devotion to these parents of so great a daughter developed naturally. They must have been wonderful people to have been so favored. Through them, Jesus became a member of an extended family - a concept that society venerated. Finally, they were saints whom average couples could more easily appreciate than the virginal parents of Jesus Himself. Devotion to St. Anne in the Mideast dates from at least the fourth century. Her feast was set at July 25. The Greeks also had a feast of SS. Joachim and Anne, observed on September 9. In the West, there was devotion to St. Anne as early as the eighth century, but she was honored by a feast day, July 26, only after the 13th century. The cult of St. Joachim developed more slowly, achieving recognition in the 15th century. He was assigned a feast day, September 16, only in 1913. After Vatican II, the Church appropriately gave the couple a joint feast on July 25, the former feast date of St. Anne alone. At Auray in Brittany, France, there was a very popular shrine to St. Anne in the early middle ages. In the New World, the chief shrine to Mary’s mother is at Beaupre in the Province of Quebec, Canada. Here, on March 13, 1658, French immigrants laid the foundation of the first chapel in her honor. St. Anne de Beaupre became a popular spot for pilgrimage from that day on. By 1905 the annual number of pilgrims had reached 168,000.
Although St. Anne remains more popular than her saintly husband, Catholic devotion to the pair has been essentially a devotion to the human family. Having produced a daughter whom God called upon to give to the world its redeemer, they had become the supreme witnesses of the greatness of the family as a divine creation. In them, every other couple can find a reassurance that in marriage, by bearing and raising children for the greater honor and glory of God, they are privileged to be, if not God’s grandparents, at least co-creators with Him of the human race. --Father Robert F. MacNamara
Scripture (Sirach 44: 1,25)
(Year C) Our grandparents and our elders wanted to see a more just, fraternal and solidary world, and they fought to give us a future. Now, it is up to us not to let them down. It is up to us to take on the tradition received, because that tradition is the living faith of our dead. Let us not transform it into “traditionalism”, which is the dead faith of the living, as an author once said. Sustained by those who are our roots, now it is our turn to bear fruit. We are the branches that must blossom and spread new seeds of history. Let us ask ourselves, then, a few concrete questions. As part of the history of salvation, in the light of those who went before me and loved me, what is it that I must now do? I have a unique and irreplaceable role in history, but what mark will I leave behind me? What am I passing on to those who will come after me? What am I giving of myself? Often we measure our lives on the basis of our income, our type of career, our degree of success and how others perceive us. Yet these are not life-giving criteria. The real question is: am I giving life? Am I ushering into history a new and renewed love that was not there before? Am I proclaiming the Gospel in my neighbourhood? Am I freely serving others, the way those who preceded me did for me? What am I doing for our Church, our city, our society? Brothers and sisters, it is easy to criticize, but the Lord does not want us to be mere critics of the system, or to be closed and “backwards-looking”, as says the author of the Letter to the Hebrews (cf. 10:39). Rather, he wants us to be artisans of a new history, weavers of hope, builders of the future, peacemakers.
May Joachim and Anne intercede for us. May they help us to cherish the history that gave us life, and, for our part, to build a life-giving history. May they remind us of our spiritual duty to honour our grandparents and our elders, to treasure their presence among us in order to create a better future. A future in which the elderly are not cast aside because, from a “practical” standpoint, they are “no longer useful”. A future that does not judge the value of people simply by what they can produce. A future that is not indifferent to the need of the aged to be cared for and listened to. A future in which the history of violence and marginalization suffered by our indigenous brothers and sisters is never repeated. That future is possible if, with God’s help, we do not sever the bond that joins us with those who have gone before us, and if we foster dialogue with those who will come after us. Young and old, grandparents and grandchildren, all together. Let us move forward together, and together, let us dream. Also, let us not forget Paul’s advice to his disciple Timothy: Remember your mother and your grandmother (cf. 2 Tim 1:5). (Pope Francis; Homily in Edmonton, Canada; July 26, 2022)
Musical Selection
Collect
that their daughter Mary grew up obedient to your word
and made ready to be the mother of your Son:
help us to commit ourselves in all things to your keeping
and grant us the salvation you promised to your people;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the same Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.