The Life
Joachim and Anna are the parents of the Most Holy Theotokos, and through her, the grandparents of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Church loves them deeply. They lived in Nazareth in Galilee, in the years just before the birth of Christ. Joachim was a quiet, devout man descended from King David. Anna was the daughter of a priest. They were married for many years and had no children. They prayed and prayed for half a lifetime. Finally an angel appeared to each of them with the same news: their prayer had been heard, and Anna would have a daughter whose name would be spoken throughout the whole world. That daughter was the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.
Joachim and Anna lived in Nazareth, a small town in Galilee that was so unremarkable that one of the disciples would later ask: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” They were a quiet, devout couple. Joachim cared for his herds and his land. Anna kept their home. They went up to Jerusalem for the great feasts. They were known to be generous — a third of everything they had went to the poor and to the Temple. There was nothing dramatic about their lives. They were faithful, they were simple, they prayed.
In all those years of marriage, Anna and Joachim had no children. In their world, this was a heavy thing. People assumed it was a sign that God was not pleased with them. They prayed every day. They went up to the Temple. They made promises to God: if only he would send them a child, they would dedicate that child to him. The years passed. They got older. They kept praying. The grief did not go away.
An angel of the Lord came to Joachim in the wilderness, where he was fasting and praying. The angel said: your prayer has been heard. Your wife will have a daughter, and you will name her Mary, and her name will be spoken throughout the whole world. The same angel appeared to Anna in her garden, with the same words. The angel told her to go to Jerusalem, to the Golden Gate of the city, where she would meet her husband. Anna and Joachim met at the Golden Gate. They embraced with tears of joy. Then they went home together. Anna conceived. The icon of their embrace is one of the most tender in the whole Orthodox tradition.
Joachim and Anna had made a vow: if the Lord gave them a child, they would dedicate that child to him. When Mary was three years old, they kept their promise. They brought her up to Jerusalem with a procession of young girls bearing candles, and they presented her at the Temple to the priest Zacharias — the same Zacharias who would later be father of Saint John the Baptist. The story records something amazing: little Mary, only three years old, walked up the fifteen steps of the Temple unaided, all by herself. The priest received her into the holy place. Joachim and Anna went back to Nazareth without her. She would live in the Temple until she was twelve.
Joachim lived to be eighty. Anna lived to be seventy-nine. Both reposed before the Annunciation, before they could see in the flesh what their daughter had been chosen to bring into the world. They visited Mary at the Temple often during her years there, until they could come no more. They went to their rest in the assurance that the Lord would complete what he had begun. The Church commemorates Saint Anna’s Dormition on July 25; Saint Joachim’s rest is honored on the same days as the joint feast.
These words from the prophet Isaiah are read by the Church on the feasts of Saints Joachim and Anna because they capture the meaning of their lives. The children whom the Lord gives us are signs and wonders of his presence in our midst. Joachim and Anna received Mary as exactly such a sign — a daughter given when they had given up hope, raised entirely as a gift back to the Lord. Their household became a sign and wonder of what God can do.
There are many things you can know about Joachim and Anna, but the simplest is this: every single Orthodox Liturgy in the world ends with their names. “Through the prayers of the holy and righteous Ancestors of God, Joachim and Anna...” Their daughter is mentioned first, of course, as the Most Pure Theotokos. But Joachim and Anna are right there with her, always, in the dismissal of every service. Wherever the Liturgy is served — in great cathedrals, in small mission churches, in the desert, in Russia, Greece, Africa, America — these two old people from a Galilean village in the first century B.C. are named with reverence at the close.
Joachim and Anna matter to every Orthodox Christian for many reasons. They are the parents of the Most Holy Mother of God, and we owe to them, after the Lord himself, the gift of having her in our lives. They are the patrons of married couples who long for children but have not been given them — patrons whose own story shows that the Lord hears those prayers, sometimes after a very long time. They are the patrons of grandparents, who pour their love and faith into a generation they will not live to see grown. They are the patrons of long, faithful, ordinary married life lived in prayer and generosity. They are the friends of every soul that has been waiting many years for an answer.