Life and Tradition
By tradition Joachim and Anna married and lived devoutly for many years while remaining childless. The Gospel of James portrays them as wealthy, and a tradition relates that they practiced rigorous charity, keeping only a third of their income for themselves and giving a third to the poor and a third to the Temple.
When Joachim sought to offer sacrifice in Jerusalem, he was turned away: by one account the High Priest Issachar rejected him as unworthy on account of his childlessness, since at that time childlessness was interpreted as a sign of divine displeasure. The rejection brought both Joachim and Anna profound grief.
After prayer and fasting, the Archangel Gabriel visited each of them separately, announcing that they would have a daughter most blessed, by whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. By tradition Joachim had withdrawn into the wilderness to pray, fasting and performing penance, while Anna lamented at home; an angel announced the coming child to each parent.
Joachim and Anna are traditionally said to have met at the city gate in an embrace, an image that became central to traditional iconography of the couple. Anna conceived and bore Mary, and the couple later presented their three-year-old daughter at the Temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated to God. By tradition both Joachim and Anna died before the Annunciation.
Sources and Scriptural Background
The principal source for the life of Joachim and Anna is the Gospel of James, a second-century apocryphal text also known as the Protoevangelium of James. It presents the couple as childless and grieving, recounts the separate angelic announcements, and relates that Anna vowed to dedicate the child to God, so that Mary was afterward raised in the Temple. The text is foundational to Eastern Orthodox accounts of the Mother of God and informs the related feasts.
The tradition that Mary was the daughter of Joachim and Anna, and that Anna had been barren and far advanced in years before Mary's conception, is preserved in this apocryphal material; scholars regard such texts as historically mainly unreliable. In the Western tradition the narrative was later included in Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (c. 1260).
The OCA's commemoration identifies Joachim as son of Barpathir, of the tribe of Judah and a descendant of King David, to whom God had revealed that the Savior of the world would be born from his seed, while Anna was the daughter of Matthan the priest of the tribe of Levi. Their joint commemoration is the Synaxis of the Holy and Righteous Ancestors of God, Joachim and Anna.
Relics & Shrines
By tradition, under the Byzantine emperor Justinian II (reigned 685–711), the body of Anna together with her maphorion, or veil, was transferred to Constantinople.
Veneration
Joachim is commemorated in the Eastern Orthodox Church on September 9, the day after the Nativity of the Theotokos (September 8), in the joint feast of Joachim and Anna. The Troparion of the feast (Tone 5) celebrates the couple as kinsmen of Christ who bore the Maiden who gave birth to Him who, though fleshless, became incarnate to save the world.
Joachim is venerated across several traditions, including the Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran churches. The Western feast falls on July 26.
