Saints' of the Week

Saint Joachin and Saint Anne

Virtue: Filial Piety

Feast Day: 26th July

Anne was the mother of the Blessed Virgin and the grandmother of Jesus Christ.

She and her husband, Joachim, were very devoted to god. They lived in Nazareth. They had no children and that was believed to be a punishment of God among the Jews. They prayed to God and begged him to give them a child. She promised to give to God’s service.

Their prayers were heard even though Anne was already too old to have children. A daughter was born to Anne and she called her Miriam or “Mary’. Anne offered herchild to God at a very early age.

Mary spent some years helping in the Temple. When she returned to Nazareth the Archangel Gabriel appeared to her and told her that she would be the Mother of the Son of God.

St. Anne’s name means “grace”. God gave her special graces and the greatest was that she was the Mother of God. St Anne is the patron of mothers and of children. Her prayers to Jesus and Mary are very powerful.

Joachim, husband of St Anne and father of the Blessed Virgin Mary, belonged to the tribe of Judah and the House of David. He and his wife came from Galilee. They lived in Nazareth and there the blessed Mother lived.

Joachim was very sad because he and his wife did not have children. However, God answered their prayers when the Virgin Mary was born. This was Joachim’s greatest honour. He is the father of Mary, the Mother of God, and the grandfather of Jesus.

Joachim and Anne offered their little daughter to God in the Temple. As a young girl she spent some time in the Temple working along with other girls. But she learned to understand the Holy Scriptures from her holy parents.

Mary loved her mother and father. In this she is a beautiful example for children.

St Joachim is honored as a patron of fathers.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola

Feast Day: Determination

Virtue: 31 July

Ignatius, born in 1491 at the royal Castle of Loyola, Spain, became a knight in the court of

 King Ferdinand V. Wounded in the siege of Pamplona, he lay ill in a castle where he picked up a book of Lives of the Saints and started to read.

When he left the castle, he went to confession. For almost a year, he lived in a cave on the banks of a river. He fasted, prayed and took care of the poor and the sick.

A man of thirty-five years of age, he entered a school in Barcelona, Spain. After being ordained a priest, he founded the society of Jesus at Paris. Schools, preaching, retreats, missionary work—any work was to be their work, especially at a time when many were falling away from the Church. Many of his men became missionaries and some taught the Indians in America.

For fifteen years, Ignatius directed the work of the society. Almost blind, he died at the age of sixty-five on July 31, 1556.