Sts. Joachim and Anna, the Holy God-bearing Ancestors

Joachim was born around 50 BC in the Galilean village of Sephoris, of the royal house of David through the line of Solomon's son Nathan; Anna was born around the same year in the village of Bethlehem of the priestly house of Aaron, through the line of her father Matthan (a tradition that gave the Theotokos blood from both the royal and the priestly lines of Israel). They married young, before they were twenty, and settled at Nazareth on Joachim's inheritance — a small estate of vineyards and flocks at the edge of the village.

They were childless for fifty years. In the Jewish religious culture of the time, barrenness was understood as a sign of divine displeasure; childless couples were excluded from much of the community life of the synagogue, and offerings from childless couples were sometimes refused. The two of them spent the long decades of their marriage in patient prayer and steady almsgiving — a third of their income to the Temple, a third to the poor of Nazareth, a third for the running of the household.

The decisive event of their lives took place around 16 BC. Joachim, by then nearly seventy, went up to Jerusalem for one of the festivals carrying his accustomed offerings to the Temple. The priest Reuben — a younger man of strict Pharisee discipline — refused to accept his offering, on the ground that a man who had failed to raise up offspring in Israel had no right to bring sacrifice. Joachim was deeply shamed and could not bear to return to Nazareth in his disgrace. He withdrew into the hill country east of Jerusalem and spent forty days in the wilderness, fasting and weeping before God.

Anna, when news reached her of his disappearance, fasted at home in Nazareth in similar grief. The angel of the Lord — tradition identifies him with the archangel Gabriel — came to her at her garden and to Joachim at his cave on the same morning, with the same word: "Your prayer has been heard. You shall conceive and bear a child; the child shall be the joy of all Israel." They were each told that the other had received the same word. Joachim returned to Jerusalem, met Anna at the Golden Gate of the Temple (the great icon of the Conception of the Theotokos shows them embracing there), and went home to Nazareth.

Within the year — by every Christian reckoning, the Theotokos was conceived in the ordinary course of marriage, with both her parents grateful for their long-delayed gift — Anna conceived. She bore a daughter on the eighth day of September of the year 15 BC, and they named her Miriam (Mary) — the same name Aaron's sister had borne in the Exodus, and that was very common in the Jewish women of the day. They raised the child in great love and gratitude and, when she was three, brought her up to the Temple to fulfill the vow that they had made — that the child of their barrenness would be dedicated to the service of God.

Joachim reposed at Nazareth a few years later, at the age of eighty. Anna lived on; she came up to Jerusalem when her daughter married Joseph, was present (with the rest of the family) at the wedding at Cana, and reposed at the age of seventy-nine — about a decade before the Crucifixion. Both were buried in the family tomb at the Garden of Gethsemane at Jerusalem, near the place where the dormition of their daughter would later take place.

The principal feasts of the holy ancestors are: September 9 (the Synaxis of Joachim and Anna, kept the day after the Nativity of the Theotokos that they made possible), December 9 (the Conception of the Theotokos by Saint Anna), and July 25 (the Dormition of Saint Anna). Joachim is also commemorated on July 25 with his wife; he has no separate feast. The two of them are named at the dismissal of every Orthodox service — "by the prayers of the holy and righteous ancestors of God, Joachim and Anna" — as the Lord's grandparents according to the flesh.