{"id":18456,"date":"2026-09-09T08:49:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T12:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sfioanevanghelistul.ca\/wordpress\/?p=18456"},"modified":"2026-09-15T20:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T00:28:12","slug":"sfintii-ioachim-si-ana-parintii-fecioarei-maria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfioanevanghelistul.ca\/wordpress\/en\/2026\/09\/09\/sfintii-ioachim-si-ana-parintii-fecioarei-maria\/","title":{"rendered":"Saints Joachim and Anne, the parents of the Virgin Mary"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today, September 9, the Orthodox Church honors the Holy and Righteous Parents Joachim and Anna, the earthly parents of the Mother of God and the grandparents of Christ.<\/p>\n

Saint Joachim was of the tribe of Judah and a descendant of King David. Anna was the daughter of the priest Matan, of the tribe of Levi, like the High Priest Aaron. Matan had three daughters: Mary, Zoe, and Anna. Mary married in Bethlehem and gave birth to Salome, Zoe also married in Bethlehem and gave birth to Elizabeth, the mother of Saint John the Baptist and the Forerunner of the Lord; and Anna married Joachim in Nazareth and, at an advanced age, gave birth to the Mother of God.<\/p>\n

Joachim and Anna were married for fifty years without having children, yet they did not lose hope, remembering the holy patriarch Abraham and his wife, the venerable Sarah, who in her old age gave birth to a son, Isaac, according to the promise. But they did not attain this blessing until they prayed to God, in the bitterness of their souls, with much fasting and prayer.<\/p>\n

\"02\"<\/a>The Synaxarion for today tells us that they were righteous before God, and on every feast day they would set aside two portions of their earnings: one portion they gave to the poor, and the other they gave to God.<\/p>\n

Once, when they were already elderly and were in Jerusalem to offer a sacrifice to the Lord, the High Priest Issachar rebuked Joachim: \u201cWhy do you bring this offering before me? Do you not know that you are unworthy to bring offerings with us, since you have left no offspring in Israel?\u201d<\/p>\n

And Joachim departed from that feast deeply grieved, ashamed, and disgraced; and, in his sorrow, he did not return to his home, but went into the wilderness and prayed to God for forty days, crying out to God with tears that He might grant him a child. Likewise, Anna, in her house and in her garden, prayed to God. And the Lord heard them and sent His angel, announcing to them the birth of the Mother of God, which indeed came to pass, for the salvation of all mankind.<\/p>\n

Anna soon became pregnant, and nine months later she gave birth to the Holy Virgin Mary. The Conception of the Mother of God is celebrated by the Church on December 9, and the Nativity of the Mother of God is celebrated on September 8.<\/p>\n

\"171522input_file0074304_1_w614_h700_q100\"<\/a>When she was three years old, Joachim and Anna took the Holy Virgin to the Temple and dedicated her to the service of God, entrusting her to the priest Zechariah. Then, after her parents had offered sacrifices to the Lord (according to the custom of the time), they left her with the other virgins in the chambers of the Temple to be raised there. The Church celebrates the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple on November 21.<\/p>\n

Over the next seven years, the righteous Anna and Joachim often visited Mary at the Temple until their deaths; however, she was left an orphan at the age of ten. Saint Joachim lived to be 80 years old, and Anna to be 79. The feast of the Dormition of Saint Anna is celebrated on July 25.<\/p>\n

During the reign of Emperor Justinian I (527\u2013565), a church was built in honor of Saint Anne in Deutera. Emperor Justinian II (685\u2013695; 705\u2013711) restored this church after Saint Anne appeared in a dream to his pregnant wife. At that time, the body and the veil (maforion) of Saint Anne were brought to Constantinople.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Today, September 9, the Orthodox Church honors the Holy and Righteous Parents Joachim and Anna, the earthly parents of the Mother of God and the grandparents of Christ. Saint Joachim was of the tribe of Judah and a descendant of King David. Anna was the daughter of the priest Matan, of the tribe of … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","post","publish","author-antonel","post-18456","format-image","category-biblioteca","post_format-post-format-image","has-format"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfioanevanghelistul.ca\/wordpress\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfioanevanghelistul.ca\/wordpress\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfioanevanghelistul.ca\/wordpress\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfioanevanghelistul.ca\/wordpress\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfioanevanghelistul.ca\/wordpress\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sfioanevanghelistul.ca\/wordpress\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18482,"href":"https:\/\/sfioanevanghelistul.ca\/wordpress\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18456\/revisions\/18482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfioanevanghelistul.ca\/wordpress\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfioanevanghelistul.ca\/wordpress\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfioanevanghelistul.ca\/wordpress\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}