On the Conception of the Theotokos

Introduction

According to the ancient tradition of the Church, since Saint Anna, the Ancestor of God, was barren, she and her husband Joachim remained without children until old age. Therefore, sorrowing over their childlessness, they besought God with a promise that, if He were to grant them the fruit of the womb, they would offer their offspring to Him as a gift. And God, hearkening to their supplication, informed them through an Angel concerning the birth of the Virgin. And thus, through God's promise, Anna conceived according to the laws of nature, and was deemed worthy to become the mother of the Mother of our Lord (see also Sept. 8).

-GOARCH

The Story

The New Testament does not mention anything about St. Anna, the mother of the Theotokos. According to Tradition, the priest Matthan (Matthew 1:15), a resident of Bethlehem, had three daughters: Mary (Mother of St. Anna, grandmother of the Theotokos), Sobe, and Anna. Mary was married in Bethlehem, where she gave birth to Elizabeth, the mother of Saint John the Baptist.

The Holy Righteous Anna was the youngest daughter of the priest Matthan, who was from the tribe of Levi, of the family of Aaron. Her husband, the Holy Righteous Joachim was from the tribe of Judah, from the house and family of King David. According to the ancient promise, the Messiah was to come from the lineage of King David (Luke 2:4).

The couple lived in Nazareth of Galilee. Every year, they gave two-thirds of their income to the Temple in Jerusalem, and to the poor. By God's Providence, the holy couple had no children until their old age. They were greatly saddened by this, since the Jews considered childlessness a great misfortune and a punishment from God. They prayed fervently for the Lord to give them children.

On a certain feast, when the Israelites were bringing gifts to God in the Temple at Jerusalem, the High Priest, believing that the childless Joachim did not have God's blessing, refused to accept gifts from him. Saint Joachim was grief stricken. He consulted the genealogy of the twelve tribes of Israel and ascertained that all righteous men had offspring, including Abraham, when he was a hundred years old. Without returning home, Saint Joachim went into the wilderness and spent forty days there in strict fasting and prayer, entreating God's mercy for himself, and washing away his disgrace with bitter tears.

St. Anna thought that she was to blame for their sorrow. One day saw a nest with barely fledged chicks in the branches of a laurel tree, she wept and prayed for the gift of a child, promising to bring the infant to God as an offering. As soon as St. Anna spoke these words, an Angel of the Lord told her that her prayer had been answered, and revealed that she would have a daughter named Mary, through whom all the peoples of the world would be blessed. Rejoicing, St. Anna hastened to the Temple in Jerusalem, in order to give thanks to God. She repeated her vow to dedicate the child to Him. An Angel came to St. Joachim in the wilderness with the same news and commanded him to go to Jerusalem. There, the Righteous Anna conceived and gave birth to the Most Holy Theotokos.

The Orthodox Church does not accept the teaching that the Mother of God was exempted from the consequences of ancestral sin (death, corruption, sin, etc.) at the moment of her conception by virtue of the future merits of her Son. Only Christ was born perfectly holy and sinless, as St. Ambrose of Milan teaches in Chapter Two of his Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke. The Holy Virgin was like everyone else in her mortality, and in being subject totemptation, although she committed no personal sins. She was not a deified creature removed from the rest of humanity. If this were the case, She would not have been truly human, and the nature that Christ took from her would not have been truly human either. If Christ does not truly share our human nature, then the possibility of our salvation is in doubt.

St. Anna has been honored since ancient times. We infer this from various Fathers of the Church, and also from ancient hymns in honor of the mother of the Theotokos. In the year 550, Emperor Justinian dedicated a temple in Constantinople to St. Anna.

The saint has left behind many relics for our veneration. These fragments can be found at Monasteries throughout Mount Athos, St. Anna's Monastery at Lygaria in Lamia, and also in the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian at Sourotis. Some can also be found in in the Roman Catholic International Crusaders Collection of Holy Relics. The Saint's wrist is to be found in the Roman Catholic church of Saint Paul "Outside the Walls" in Rome.

-OCA