I recently read somewhere that, in the United States today, maybe more than two million grandparents are taking on the primary responsibilities required to raise their grandchildren. This particular phenomenon of grandparents as parental substitutes is a response to some of the particular problems that increasingly characterize our society and the contemporary collapse of the family as we have until recently known it. That said, in both better and worse times and places and in various configurations of family structures, grandparents have often played a major role in the formation and socialization of their children’s children.
In my own experience, for example, while I grew up in an intact, stable nuclear family (with a large nearby network of aunts, uncles, and cousins), my mother’s mother lived with us until her death when I was 19. Her presence and the influence of her presence were profound. On a purely practical level, her presence made it possible for my mother to work part-time, which was financially necessary. My grandmother’s presence in our home also connected us, more than anything else might have, with our family’s past pre-immigration history and with the actual experience of being immigrants. Finally, my grandmother’s personal piety had a particularly powerful personal influence on me and on how I came to appreciate the Church’s life and worship as an essential component of a meaningful life.
All that is worth recalling today as the Church commemorates Saints Joachim and Anne, the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The New Testament is surprisingly silent on the subject of Mary’s family and her life prior to the Annunciation. The earliest known account of her family of origin is found in the Protoevangelium of James a non-canonical, « apocryphal » text from the late second century, which identifies her parents as Saint Anne and Saint Joachim. The liturgical commemoration of Mary’s birth is connected with the dedication of an ancient church in Jerusalem, now known as the Church of Saint Anne, built on a site which eventually came to be identified with the home of Saints Joachim and Anne.
Devotion to Saint Anne developed early in the East, later in the West. Once it did develop, however, Saint Anne became patroness not just of grandmothers but women seeking a husband or hoping for a child.
According to the Protoevangelium of James, Joachim and Anne were a generous couple, who donated a third of their income to the poor, a fitting image for today when so many grandparents find themselves the de facto heads of poor families!
Today’s fast ought to inspire us to think of our grandparents with gratitude, for what they may have done for us directly and indirectly in how they raised and formed our parents. To them, may we apply the words we heard in our first reading, from the Book of Sirach:
Their virtues have not been forgotten; their wealth remains in their families, their heritage with their descendants … Their bodies are peacefully laid away, but their name lives on and on.
Homily for Saints Joachim and Anne, Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, July 26, 2023.
Photo: Copy of Karl Müller’s The Education of the Blessed Virgin, depicting Mary as a young girl kneeling by her mother, Saint Anne, holding an open book. St. Anne’s Altar, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, New York.
