Religious Education
Marylene Douglas
All students attending St Louis de Montfort's Aspendale have the right to feel safe. The care, safety and wellbeing of children and young people is a fundamental responsibility of all within our school.
According to historical tradition, Anne and Joachim were the parents of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Tradition and popular legend tell us that Anne and Joachim were particularly devoted to their faith, but throughout their long-married life, they were saddened by their inability to have children. To a couple within that culture at that time, infertility often led to ostracism and to their fears about future insecurity as they further aged. However, one day whilst Joachim worked in the fields and Anne was at home, an angel simultaneously appeared to each of them to announce that, despite their considerable age, they would indeed conceive a daughter who would have a particularly vital role in the coming of the promised Messiah! Mary was born and these faithful parents consecrated her to a life of devotion to God, culminating in her becoming the mother of Jesus the Christ.
In Catholic tradition, Anne and Joachim have become the patron saints of grandparenting. Anne has the extra saintly responsibilities associated with childbirth and care, the protector of couples who do not have children, those who experience infertility, and of women during their time of pregnancy and childbirth.
July 26th is the date for the Church to focus on the vital role that grandparents have in the life of the contemporary family because of the faith, love, wisdom, and practical acts of service that they gift to their extended families. Pope Francis commented on the role of grandparents:
Saints Joachim and Anne were part of a long chain of people who had transmitted their faith and love for God, expressed in the warmth and love of family life, down to Mary, who received the Son of God in her womb and who gave him to the world, to us. How precious is the family as the privileged place for transmitting the faith! … How important grandparents are for family life, for passing on the human and religious heritage which is so essential for each and every society! (1)
SOURCE: 1. (2019), “The Love and faith of the Grandparents of Jesus: St Anne and St Joachim”, The Basilica,https://www.nationalshrine.org/blog/the-love-and-faith-of-the-grandparents-of-jesus-st-anne-and-stjoachim/
