July 26, 2025
Memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne, Parents of the
Blessed Virgin Mary
Lectionary: 606
Reading 1
Now will I praise those godly men,
our ancestors, each in his own time:
These were godly men
whose virtues have not been forgotten;
Their wealth remains in their families,
their heritage with their descendants;
Through God's covenant with them their family endures,
their posterity for their sake.
And for all time their progeny will endure,
their glory will never be blotted out;
Their bodies are peacefully laid away,
but their name lives on and on.
At gatherings their wisdom is retold,
and the assembly proclaims their praise.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (Luke 1:32) God will give
him the throne of David, his father.
The LORD swore to David
a firm promise from which he will not withdraw:
"Your own offspring
I will set upon your throne."
R. God will give him the throne of David, his father.
For the LORD has chosen Zion;
he prefers her for his dwelling.
"Zion is my resting place forever;
in her will I dwell, for I prefer her."
R. God will give him the throne of David, his father.
"In her will I make a horn to sprout forth for David;
I will place a lamp for my anointed.
His enemies I will clothe with shame,
but upon him my crown shall shine."
R. God will give him the throne of David, his father.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
They yearned for the comforting of Israel,
and the Holy Spirit rested upon them.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus said to his disciples:
"Blessed are your eyes, because they see,
and your ears, because they hear.
Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people
longed to see what you see but did not see it,
and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/0726-memorial-joachim-anne.cfm
Saint
Joachim and Saint Anne, Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Scripture tells us absolutely nothing about Mary’s
family. All that we have is really legend. It comes mainly from a second
century writing called the Proto-Gospel (Protevangelium) of James.
We need to realize that in the early Church it took some time before the books,
which now form part of our New Testament, were finally chosen. There were
many other ‘pseudo-gospels’, which in the end, were not accepted as
genuine. One of the more respected of these was the Proto-Gospel of
James. It is possible that it does contain some genuine traditions about
Mary, although this would be difficult to prove.
Out of devotion to Mary, some people were saying that she
had been conceived by divine intervention like Jesus. But by asserting
that she had two human parents, whom we know as Joachim and Anne, it is asserted
that she was born in the normal way, like every other human person. They
are both regarded as the parents of Mary and true grandparents of Jesus.
According to the legend, their names were Joachim and
Anne. It is said they were rich and pious people of Nazareth. Like a
number of the characters in the Old Testament, and Elizabeth in the New
Testament, they were said to be childless in a society where this was
considered a social stigma. So Joachim withdrew to the desert to pray
while Anne remained in the home, praying for a child whom she would devote to
the service of God. Their prayer was heard; Joachim returned to his wife
and they conceived a girl whom they named Mary.
It was natural in the Church for devotion to be directed to
the parents of such a special daughter. And because, unlike the situation
of Mary and Joseph, they had produced a child in the perfectly normal way, they
were more easily identified with by other parents. Devotion to St Anne in the
Eastern church dates from at least the 4th century. In the West, there was
devotion to her as early as the 8th century, but she was honoured by a feast
day, July 26, only after the 13th century. Devotion to St Joachim did not
really develop until the 15th century. He was only assigned a feast day, 16 September,
in 1913. Following the Second Vatican Council, their feasts were combined and
are now celebrated together.
At Auray in Brittany, France, there was a very popular
shrine to St Anne in the early middle ages. In North America, there is a
popular shrine to St Anne in Beaupre, about 30 km from the city of Quebec. It
was on 13 March, 1658 that French immigrants erected the first chapel there in
her honour. Among the Catholics of India, too, there is great devotion to
St Anne. Although devotion to Joachim is not as popular, devotion to both of
them is seen as showing respect for the family.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/f0726s/
HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER
Feast of Saints Joachim and Anne
"Commonwealth Stadium" in Edmonton
Tuesday, 26 July 2022
___________________________________
Today we celebrate the feast of the grandparents of Jesus.
The Lord has gathered all of us together precisely on this occasion, so dear to
you and to me. It was in the home of Joachim and Anne that the child Jesus came
to know his older relatives and experienced the closeness, tender love and
wisdom of his grandparents. Let us think about our own grandparents, and
reflect on two important things.
First: we are children of a history that needs to be
preserved. We are not isolated individuals, islands. No one comes into this
world detached from others. Our roots, the love that awaited us and welcomed us
into the world, the families in which we grew up, are part of a unique history
that preceded us and gave us life. We did not choose that history; we received
it as a gift, one that we are called to cherish, for, as the Book of Sirach
reminds us, we are “descendants” of those who went before us; we are their
“inheritance” (Sir 44:11). An inheritance that, quite apart from
any claim to prestige or authority, intelligence or creativity in song or
poetry, is centred on righteousness, on fidelity to God and his will. This is
what they passed on to us. In order to accept who we really are, and how
precious we are, we need to accept as part of ourselves the men and women from
whom we are descended. They did not simply think about themselves, but passed
on to us the treasure of life. We are here thanks to our parents, but also
thanks to our grandparents, who helped us feel welcome in the world. Often they
were the ones who loved us unconditionally, without expecting anything back.
They took us by the hand when we were afraid, reassured us in the dark of
night, encouraged us when in the full light of day we faced important life
decisions. Thanks to our grandparents, we received a caress from the history
that preceded us: we learned that goodness, tender love and wisdom are the
solid roots of humanity. It was in our grandparents’ homes that many of us
breathed in the fragrance of the Gospel, the strength of a faith which makes us
feel at home. Thanks to them, we discovered that kind of “familiar” faith, a
domestic faith. Because that is how faith is fundamentally passed on, at home,
through a mother tongue, with affection and encouragement, care and closeness.
This is our history, to which we are heirs and which we are
called to preserve. We are children because we are grandchildren. Our
grandparents left a unique mark on us by their way of living; they gave us
dignity and confidence in ourselves and others. They bestowed on us something
that can never be taken from us and that, at the same time, allows us to be
unique, original and free. From our grandparents we learned that love is never
forced; it never deprives others of their interior freedom. That is the way
Joachim and Anne loved Mary and Jesus; and that is how Mary loved Jesus, with a
love that never smothered him or held him back, but accompanied him in
embracing the mission for which he had come into the world. Let us try to learn
this, as individuals and as a Church. May we learn never to pressure the
consciences of others, never to restrict the freedom of those around us, and
above all, never to fail in loving and respecting those who preceded us and are
entrusted to our care. For they are a precious treasure that preserves a
history greater than themselves.
The Book of Sirach also tells us that preserving the history
that gave us life does not mean obscuring the “glory” of our ancestors. We
should not lose their memory, nor forget the history that gave birth to our own
lives. We should always remember those whose hands caressed us and who held us
in their arms; for in this history we can find consolation in moments of
discouragement, a light to guide us, and courage to face the challenges of life.
Yet preserving the history that gave us life also means constantly returning to
that school where we first learned how to love. It means asking ourselves, when
faced with daily choices, what the wisest of the elders we have known would do
in our place, what advice our grandparents and great-grandparents would have
given us.
So, dear brothers and sisters, let us ask ourselves: are we
children and grandchildren capable of safeguarding this treasure that we have
inherited? Do we remember the good teachings we have received? Do we talk to
our elders, and take time to listen to them? And, in our increasingly
well-equipped, modern and functional homes, do we know how to set aside a
worthy space for preserving their memory, a special place, a small family memorial
which, through precious pictures and objects, allows us to remember in prayer
those who went before us? Have we kept their Bible, their rosary beads? In the
fog of forgetfulness that overshadows our turbulent times, it is essential,
brothers and sisters, to take care of our roots, to pray for and with our
forebears, to dedicate time to remember and guard their legacy. This is how a
family tree grows; this is how the future is built.
Let us now think of the second important thing. In addition
to being children of a history that needs to be preserved, we
are authors of a history yet to be written. Each of us can
recognize ourselves for who and what we are, marked by both light and shadows,
and by the love that we did or did not receive. This is the mystery of human
life: we are all someone’s children, begotten and shaped by another, but as we
become adults, we too are called to give life, to be a father, mother or
grandparent to someone else. Thinking about the people we are today, what do we
want to do with ourselves? The grandparents who went before, the elderly who
had dreams and hopes for us, and made great sacrifices for us, ask us an
essential question: what kind of a society do we want to build? We received so
much from the hands of those who preceded us. What do we, in turn, want to
bequeath to those who come after us? “Rose water”, that is a diluted faith, or
a living faith? A society founded on personal profit or on fraternity? A world
at war or a world at peace? A devastated creation or a home that continues to
be welcoming?
Let us not forget that the life-giving sap travels from the
roots to the branches, to the leaves, to the flowers, and then to the fruit of
the tree. Authentic tradition is expressed in this vertical dimension: from the
bottom up. We need to be careful lest we fall into a caricature of tradition,
which is not vertical – from roots to fruits – but horizontal – forwards and
backwards. Tradition conceived in this way only leads us to a kind of
“backwards culture”, a refuge of self-centredness, which simply pigeonholes the
present, trapping it within the mentality that says, “We’ve always done it this
way”.
In the Gospel we just heard, Jesus tells the disciples that
they are blessed because they can see and hear what so many prophets and
righteous people could only hope for (cf. Mt 13:16-17). Many
people had believed in God’s promise of the coming Messiah, had prepared the
way for him and had announced his arrival. But now that the Messiah has
arrived, those who can see and hear him are called to welcome him and proclaim
his presence in our midst.
Brothers and sisters, this also applies to us. Those who
preceded us have passed on to us a passion, a strength and a yearning, a flame
that it is up to us to reignite. It is not a matter of preserving ashes, but of
rekindling the fire that they lit. 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
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