Feast of St. Anne, Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Today is the feast day of the Mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Grandmother of Our Lord, Jesus Christ
The following is from Tradition in Action
Prof. Plinio
Corrêa de Oliveira
Biographical selection:
According to
Catherine Emmerick many ancestors of St. Anne were Essenes. Those pious people
were descendants of those priests who in the time of Moses and Aaron carried
the Ark of the Covenant. They received their rules in the days of Isaiah and
Jeremiah.
The Essenes
became numerous and fixed themselves in Mount Sinai and Mount Carmel, where
Elias had seen God and had received the symbolic vision of Our Lady. Later they
migrated to the region of the Jordan. They wore poor and simple apparel. They
married, but observed a great purity of customs in the married state. With
mutual consent, husband and wife frequently lived apart in distant huts. They
also ate apart.
Even in
those early times some of the forefathers of St. Anne and other members of the
Holy Family were found among them. From them sprang those called the Children
of the Prophets. One of these holy men advised Anne to marry Joachim, from the
tribe of David, because he saw some extraordinary thing would come from this
marriage.
Anne was
especially dear to her parents. Her birth was predicted by an Angel who painted
a large “M” on the wall of her parents’ room. She was not strikingly beautiful,
though prettier than others. She was extraordinarily pious, pure and innocent.
She was the same at every age, as a maiden, as a mother and as an old woman.
When in her
fifth year, Anne was taken to the Temple, as Mary was later. There she remained
twelve years, returning home in her 17th year.
Joachim, her
future husband, was short and thin, and a man of charming manners. In
disposition and morals, he was a superior man. Like St. Anne he had something
very distinguished about him. Both had a notable seriousness in their behavior.
Very few times have I seen them laughing, although they were neither sad nor
melancholic. Both possessed a calm, uniform disposition; even in early youth
they had a great maturity.
At an
advanced age, after having suffered unspeakable humiliation because of her
sterility, St. Anne miraculously conceived Our Lady.
Comments of Prof. Plinio:
There are
several things in this selection that deserve some comments.
First, there
is the part referring to the Essenes. Almost everything in the Old Covenant had
a prophetic aspect, because it prefigured the Church. In this regard, the
Essenes were prefigures of the religious life in the Church.
You can see
that the graces of the Old Testament were not great enough to permit the state
of perfect chastity to be possible for a large number of people. This grace is
a very elevated, magnificent one. In the Old Testament it existed in a few,
like Elias, but it was a very rare grace. Men and women were given sufficient
grace to save themselves, but just a few would keep perfect chastity.
hose Essenes
lived as married couples. Husband and wives took up a special type of life,
observing a kind of religious life. They lived as if they were cenobites, with
a house for each family. This life was marked by the men and women eating
separately, poverty, and purity. The Essenes were known for an extraordinary
purity of customs and having prophets as their leaders.
Second, it
is beautiful to see this role of the Prophets: the Essenian movement was an
institution directed by a line of Prophets. This institution maintained the
good spirit and the salt of orthodoxy in Israel.
Third, you
see that the prevision of the birth of Our Lady was somehow communicated to one
of those Prophets, who told St. Anne to marry St. Joachim. It is understandable
that this would happen, because according to the Carmelite tradition, those
Essenes were remote spiritual sons of Elias, who was the Prophet of Our Lady
par excellence. So, it is natural that a member of this line of Prophets that
began with Elias would announce the birth of the Virgin Mary, who Elias had
seen from Mount Carmel prefigured in that small cloud which would bring rain to
Israel.
Fourth, it
is also interesting that before the birth of St. Anne an angel drew a “M” on
the wall of her parents’ bedroom. This was a symbol of her mission to be mother
of Mary; she came into the world turned toward the extraordinary maternity of
Our Lady, conceived without original sin.
Fifth,
perhaps the most beautiful part of the description is the moral profile drawn
of St. Anne and St. Joachim. It is very well depicted. They were persons filled
with wisdom, not like the modern man and woman, talking about everything
superficially, without thinking. No, they used to count, weigh, and measure
everything they did and said. This is why they were calm and silent.
St. Anne did
not have an extraordinary beauty, but was pretty of feature. St. Joachim was
slender, but a man with very good and charming manners. The couple was unjustly
scorned because St. Anne was sterile. In the Old Covenant it was considered
shameful to be sterile, because all Jews hoped for the honor to be in the
ancestral line of the Messiah. Supposedly a childless couple would be excluded
from that blessing, and chastised by God. The people did not realize that St.
Joachim and St. Anne were the ones who were blessed as being chosen to be in
the line of the Messiah, even though St. Anne was sterile.
It is
necessary to emphasize this point. The great plans of God demand that an
immense effort be realized. They depend on a long wait, a time that seems wasted.
Sometimes we walk in a direction that seems to be the opposite of the plan of
God.
Then, at the
end of the road, Divine Providence acts. God asks an act of confidence from the
person whom He wants to honor by making him part of His plan. He asks him to
hope against all hope, to trust against all appearances of reality. The person
has to pass through the trial of appearing to be abandoned by God. Afterwards,
God confirms his choice and executes His plans with that person. This apparent
abandonment and the appearance of being put aside by God is His way to manifest
His affection.
In the life
of St. Anne this point touches us and is a model for us. Many of the
expectations of our vocation put by Our Lady in our souls may not be met for a
long time. At times we may even have the impression that they will never be
realized. The longer the delay, the more splendidly the promise will be
fulfilled. Let us ask St. Anne to help us accept and understand this, and give
us the needed strength to follow this road.
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