As I noted yesterday in my post on St. Marguerite Bourgeoys, so many of the Saints seem out of reach or out of touch to us because they lived such extraordinary and unrelatable lives. But some of my favourite Saints are remembered for doing things that many, if not most, Christians do. For this reason, today I’d like to spend some time thinking about the Holy Ancestors of God, Sts. Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Virgin Mary who are remembered for just that: being parents.
The story of Mary’s birth and childhood comes not from the Scriptures, but from a mid-second-century work called the Protoevangelium of James. Skeptically, we might call it second-century fan fic about Mary’s origin story, but truth be told, there are a lot of things about the ancient world we take as fact based on a lot weaker and more distant attribution than this. At any rate, the story fits in very nicely with the typical biblical birth narrative. As in the stories of Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth, and others, it’s a story of a holy couple who is nonetheless not given the long-awaited blessing of children until very late in life. (As we’ve seen before, the Scriptures always emphasize the miraculous aspect of conception and limit the importance of sex in it — which is great for theology and our understanding of what sex is about, but not great for sex education!) According to the story, so great was the social stigma of not having children that Joachim was barred from offering sacrifices at the Temple, despite being a successful and generous man. The couple is desperate and prays fervently to be given a child. Angels appear independently to both of them promising their prayers will be answered and soon Anna finds herself pregnant. (Note that there is no hint of the later Roman doctrine of the ‘immaculate conception’ in these early stories; that is a much later development arising from the West’s interpretation of the Fall and ‘original sin’.)
As a holy couple devoted to God, Joachim and Anna raise their daughter, whom of course we know as Mary, within the boundaries and blessings of the Law. They set her on the path of righteousness, and offer her to God in the Temple. The story even says she was raised among other similarly-dedicated girls in and around the Temple complex. (There is no evidence of such a practice in Judaism, however it was widespread in other religions around the Eastern Mediterranean, so it’s not inconceivable that it could have been appropriated in Second Temple Judaism. But whatever we make of this detail, the point for us is that Mary was raised intentionally for the service of God.)
So, what are we to make of this story and how can it inform our own? There are two sides to it that are equally important to my mind. First, Sts. Joachim and Anna are remembered primarily simply for being parents. Parenthood is a hard job and in a sense honouring these two parents hallows it, marks it as a powerful — if very challenging! — path of holiness. It’s a path few people will succeed in totally, but it’s unquestionably one of the most vivid and common arenas of the life of faith. But second, Sts. Joachim and Anna were also holy before and apart from being Mary’s parents. God didn’t take away any ‘stain’ or insufficiency in them by granting them to become parents, but merely the human social stigma attached to childlessness. As beautiful and powerful an arena of faith as parenthood may be, it is not the only one — something many so-called ‘religious conservatives’ these days seem to forget. (Again, I have to remind folk here that the raging question in the New Testament about sex wasn’t whether it was possible to be Christian and not have children, but whether it was possible to be Christian and still engage in family life!) They were holy before becoming parents and they were holy in their parenthood. In this way, St. Joachim and Anna are wonderful examples for all of us.
Since you were righteous under the law of grace, O Joachim and Anna,
you gave birth to the God-given infant for our sake.
Therefore, the divine Church radiantly keeps feast today,
joyfully celebrating your honorable memory and giving glory to God
who has raised up a horn of salvation from the house of David. (Troparion of the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anna)
Matthew Root 