Be A Model

Saints Joachim and Anne, Parents of the Virgin Mary

Remember when you first realized that you were becoming like your mother? Or turning out to be just like your father? Kids do tend to grow up to be like their parents. Just like Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne, were the good ground from which the seed of goodness grew, we can be the good soil from which our children spring and produce much fruit. So it might be better for us to invest our energy in self-control, rather than kid-control. The goal, remember, is not well-behaved kids but well-behaved adults. 

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The Gospels tell us little about the home of our Lord’s mother. She is thought to have been of Davidic descent and to have been brought up in a devout Jewish family who cherished the hope of Israel for the coming kingdom of God, in remembrance of the promise God made to Abraham. 

In the second century, a pious Christian sought to supply a fuller account of Mary’s birth and early life to satisfy the interest and curiosity of believers and bequeathed to the Church a pseudepigraphal book known as the Protoevangelium of James, also known as The Nativity of Mary. The book includes a legendary narrative of Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne, built out of the Old Testament narratives of the births of Isaac and of Samuel (whose mother’s name, Hannah, is the original form of Anne), and from traditions of the birth of John the Baptist. In this narrative, Joachim and Anne – a faithful but childless elderly couple who grieved that they would have no posterity – were rewarded with the birth of a girl whom they dedicated in infancy to the service of God under the tutelage of the Temple priests.