Catholic Blesseds, Saints, Solemnities & Holy Days

St. Anne is from the Hebrew word Hannah, meaning “favor” or “grace”.  St. Anne is from the David’s house line, and was the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary and grandmother of Jesus Christ.  St. Anne was born in Bethlehem, and her husband was born in Nazareth. 

She like her husband St. Joachim has very little written about them.  All of our information concerning the name of St. Anne as the Mother of Mary is derived from the apocryphal literature, the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary of St. James.  This writing goes back to about 150 AD, and was strongest in the Eastern, Orient church.  The fathers of the church rejected it until the 13^th century, and from that time on; the story of St. Anne became one of the most popular saints of the Latin Church.  

That story gives the following account: in Nazareth there lived a rich and pious couple, Joachim and Anne.  They were childless.  When on a feast day Joachim presented himself to offer sacrifice in the temple, he was repulsed because men without offspring were unworthy to be admitted.  With this action, Joachim did not return home, but went into the mountains to make his plan with God, in solitude.  Anne, having learned the reason for the long absence of her husband, cried out to the Lord to take away from her the curse of sterility, promising to dedicate her child to the service of God.  Their prayers were heard, and an Angel came to Anne and said, “The Lord has looked upon thy tears; thou shalt conceive and give birth and the fruit of thy womb shall be blessed by all the world”.  The Angel made the same promise to Joachim, who returned to his wife.  

The supposed relics of St. Anne were brought from the Holy Land to Constantinople in 710 and were kept there in the church of St. Sophia until 1333.  The tradition is that the body of St. Anne was brought by St. Lazarus, the friend of Christ, and eventually ended up in the Magnificent Chapel in 1664.  She is also the patroness of miners, Christ being compared to gold, and Mary to Silver.   

Since the 7^th Century the Greek and Russian Churches have celebrated the Feast of St. Anne.  The Western Churches began to celebrate the feast of St. Anne in the 16^th Century.  Again, there is no mention of St. Anne in the New Testament, the story comes chiefly from the Protevangelium of St. James, which only dated back to the year 150.