The Holy and Righteous Ancestors of God Joachim and Anna (I)

Saints Joachim and Anna lived in the Judean city of Nazareth. Saint Joachim was a descendant of the royal line of David, and Anna was of the tribe of Levi. Saint Joachim used to divide the fruits of his labour into three: one part he offered to God, bringing it to the altar of the Lord; the second he distributed to the poor; and only the third he kept for the maintenance of his household.

Saints Joachim and Anna were childless: “the spring was holy, but could not send forth a river” (Saint Theodore the Studite). In the Old Testament barrenness was considered a deprivation of God’s blessing, the heaviest punishment sent by God. The Law gave Saint Joachim the right to put away his wife because of her barrenness and take another, but in spirit he stood above the Law.

God “loosed and did away with the great wasting through sorrow of the all-wise Anna, and the mourning of her husband Joachim for their childlessness, and the barrenness common to both. And He had mercy on their prayers, and gave to the barren one a fruit foretold and a virgin sprung from the seeds of prayer, and to Joachim a shoot surpassing all hope, and so made to blossom with offspring that land withered by the drought of childlessness” (Saint Andrew of Crete): of Saints Joachim and Anna was born “the palace of the King of heaven”, the Most Holy Virgin, the Mother of God Mary.

The happy parents brought up the daughter given them by God for three years, and then, according to the vow they had made, brought her to the temple in Jerusalem and dedicated her to the Lord.

After this, by God’s will, Saint Joachim lived only a few more years, and reposed in peace at the age of eighty. After her husband’s repose Anna moved to Jerusalem and lived by the temple, near her daughter. Soon, within two years, she too reposed, at the age of seventy-nine.

The holy Church commemorates the holy and righteous Joachim and Anna on 9 September, in order, after celebrating the feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God, to pay due honour to her parents as well. As ancestors of the Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh, they are called “the Ancestors of God”, and at the end of every church service, at the dismissal, we ask their intercession.