Saint Anne

The Gospels do not name Mary's parents. Franciscan Media puts the position squarely: what can be said is that Joachim and Anne existed, since Mary had parents; the Scriptures give no factual details about them, and their names come from legendary sources written more than a century after Jesus died. ²

The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia traces all of it to one document, the Protoevangelium of James, which "goes back to about A.D. 150," and warns that it cannot be accepted as reliable on its own authority. ¹ It notes that even the name Anne is questionable, since the story closely mirrors the biblical account of Hannah, the mother of Samuel - the same name - and may simply have borrowed it. ¹

In the Protoevangelium, Anne and Joachim are a wealthy couple of Nazareth who are childless and grieved by it. They pray. An angel promises Anne that she will "conceive and give birth and the fruit of thy womb shall be blessed by all the world." Their daughter is Mary. ¹

That is the account behind every painting of Anne teaching Mary to read, and behind her patronage of women in labor and of childless couples.

Devotion to Anne is old in the East - traceable to the fourth century, with her feast in early Greek liturgical books - and comparatively recent in the West, arriving in the thirteenth century by way of the Golden Legend and spreading through the Latin Church by 1584. ¹ The East keeps her feast on 25 July, the West on 26 July. ¹²

Franciscan Media makes the point that matters most about her. Joachim and Anne represent the generations whose ordinary religious practice made the household in which Mary grew up - and Mary's prayerfulness, her steadiness in crisis, her readiness when she was asked, all came from somewhere. ²

Their feast, the reflection says, "is the feast of grandparents," reminding them of their responsibility to set a tone for generations they will not live to see, and reminding the young that older people's "greater perspective, depth of experience, and appreciation of life's profound rhythms are all part of a wisdom not to be taken lightly." ²

Saint Anne is the patron saint of mothers, of grandparents - jointly with Joachim - and of women in labor. ²

The feast of Saints Joachim and Anne is celebrated on July 26 in the Western Church, and Anne is honored on July 25 in the East. ¹²

Nothing Anne did was recorded. No words of hers survive, and the sources cannot even confirm her name. ¹ What the Church has held onto instead is the household: Mary's steadiness, her readiness when the angel came, her habit of prayer, all of it learned somewhere before the Gospels start. ²

That is why grandparents come to her. Franciscan Media calls July 26 the feast of grandparents and puts their work squarely: setting a tone for people they will not live to see. ² Anne is the patron of exactly that kind of labor, the sort that only shows up in somebody else's life, years later, under a different name.

Couples waiting for a child have brought that sorrow to her for centuries, because the tradition puts Anne in the same wait. ¹ Whether the story is history is a fair question, and this page does not pretend otherwise. It has not stopped anyone.