Saint Joachim

Saint Joachim is the father of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the maternal grandfather of Jesus Christ in the natural order. Together with his wife Saint Anne, he is venerated throughout the Catholic Church as the human father through whom God prepared the lineage of the Incarnation.

The traditional account

Like the name of Saint Anne, the name of Joachim is not preserved in the canonical New Testament. Both names come from the Protoevangelium of James (second century), an early Christian text that, while not canonical Scripture, has been respected throughout the Catholic and Eastern Christian tradition as a reliable preservation of apostolic memory regarding Mary's parents.¹

According to the Protoevangelium, Joachim was a wealthy Jewish shepherd of the line of David. He and his wife Anne had been married for many years without children, a public hardship in first-century Jewish culture. When Joachim brought his offering to the Temple at one of the great feasts, the priest Reuben rejected it on the ground that a man without children could not contribute to the Temple of the God of Israel.

Joachim withdrew in shame to the wilderness, where he fasted forty days and forty nights, praying for divine intervention. An angel of the Lord appeared to him with the announcement that Anne would conceive a daughter. The same angel appeared to Anne at her home with the same news. Joachim and Anne met joyfully at the Golden Gate of the Jerusalem Temple, an iconographic moment widely depicted in Catholic medieval and Renaissance art (the "Meeting at the Golden Gate"). Mary was born to Anne in due course.

When Mary was three years old, Anne and Joachim presented her at the Temple in fulfillment of a vow Joachim had made. Mary remained in Temple service until her betrothal to Saint Joseph. Joachim is traditionally believed to have died before Mary's marriage; his absence from the canonical Gospels suggests that he had passed by the time of the public events recorded there.

Theological significance

The Catholic tradition has always understood Joachim, with Anne, as the human father in whose Davidic lineage God prepared the maternal genealogy of the Incarnation. The Catholic doctrine of Mary's Davidic descent (which the Catechism affirms, CCC 488, in connection with the prophecy of Isaiah and the genealogies of Matthew and Luke) is grounded in part on the traditional identification of Joachim as a man of the house of David.

The Eastern Catholic and Orthodox tradition often refers to Joachim and Anne together as "the Holy Forefathers of God" (Theopatores), an honor reserved in the Catholic-Eastern joint vocabulary for the most directly significant pre-Christ figures in the human ancestry of the Incarnation.

Veneration across the Catholic Church

The veneration of Joachim and Anne developed in parallel in the Eastern and Western Catholic Churches. Joachim's feast was celebrated separately in the Western Catholic Church from at least the late medieval period: at varying dates (March 20, August 16, September 1, the Sunday within the Octave of the Assumption, etc.) before being fixed at August 16 by Pope Saint Pius X in 1913. Pope Saint Paul VI, in the 1969 calendar reform, moved the feast to July 26, the same date as Anne's feast, making the joint celebration of the parents of Mary the standard form in the Roman Calendar.

The Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches have always celebrated Anne and Joachim together, on September 9 (the day after the Nativity of Mary on September 8), under the title "Synaxis of the Holy Forefathers Joachim and Anne."

Patronage and devotion

Saint Joachim is patron of fathers, grandfathers, linen merchants (from a medieval association), and, with Our Lady of Aparecida, of Brazil. His feast on July 26, celebrated jointly with Saint Anne, is a Memorial in the universal Catholic Church.

The Catholic devotion to Joachim is particularly characteristic of regions where Marian piety is strong: France, French Canada, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and the Catholic communities of Eastern Europe. He is invoked by Catholic fathers seeking the grace of patience and protection of their families.

Pope Francis, in his 2021 apostolic letter Patris Corde (on Saint Joseph), drew an extended parallel between Joachim (Mary's father) and Joseph (Mary's husband), emphasizing the Catholic tradition of the silent and protective Catholic father in the divine plan of salvation.

The traditional prayer to Saint Joachim and Saint Anne reads, in part:

Glorious Saint Joachim, faithful husband of Saint Anne and father of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by the divine election of God you were chosen as the human father in whose Davidic lineage the Mother of the Savior would come to be...

For the related saint with whom Joachim is universally venerated, see Saint Anne. For the Marian theology that grounds the veneration of Mary's parents, see What are the four Marian dogmas? and What is the Immaculate Conception?. For the iconographic and theological connection between Mary's father and Mary's husband, see Saint Joseph.

Sources

Footnotes

1. The Protoevangelium of James (also called the Infancy Gospel of James), traditionally dated to the second century, is the principal early source for the names and lives of Joachim and Anne. The Eastern Orthodox liturgical commemoration "Synaxis of the Holy Forefathers" (September 9) is attested from at least the sixth century. See Pope Francis, apostolic letter Patris Corde (December 8, 2020), for the modern Catholic theological development of the Joachim-Joseph-paternal theme. ↩