Saint Anne and Saint Joachim

One day, as she was weeping in this manner, she withdrew into the interior of her house, and, falling to her knees, she poured out her sighs and vows in abundance before the Lord. Her prayer finished, she had made an effort to dispel her sorrow; she had put aside her mourning clothes, adorned her head, and donned her bridal gown. Toward the ninth hour, she went down to walk in her garden. There was a laurel tree under which she sat and made this prayer to God: "God of my fathers, hear me and bless me as you blessed Sarah, to whom you gave a son." And, raising her eyes, she caught sight of a sparrow's nest on the laurel and began to weep.

"Alas! To whom shall I compare myself?" she said to herself. "From whom am I born that I should be the curse of Israel? I am pushed away, I am despised, I am cast out of the temple.

"To whom shall I compare myself? I cannot compare myself to the birds of the air, for the birds of the air can appear before you, O my God!

"To whom shall I compare myself? I cannot compare myself to the animals of the earth, for the animals of the earth are fruitful before you, Lord!

"To whom shall I compare myself? I cannot compare myself to the rivers and the sea, for the rivers and the sea are not struck with sterility: whether calm or stirred, their waters, filled with fish, sing your praise.

"To whom shall I compare myself? I cannot compare myself to the plains, for the plains bear their fruits in their time, and their fertility blesses you, O my God!"

What sorrow in these sighs of a wife deprived of the glories and joys of motherhood! How well these repetitions express the despair of a soul overwhelmed with shame, and which finds a bitter pleasure in repeating its humiliation to itself!

And as she spoke these words, an angel suddenly appeared before her and said to her: "Fear not, it is in the designs of God to give you a child, and the one who will be born of you will be the admiration of the centuries until the end of time." Having spoken thus, he disappeared. Anne, moved and trembling at such a vision, returned to her dwelling and threw herself upon her bed as if dead. She spent the whole day and night in trembling and in prayer. When day came, she called her servant to her and said: "You know that I am alone and in sorrow; why did you not come to me?" "If God has made you sterile and has taken your husband away from you," her servant replied, murmuring, "what can I do about it?" Upon hearing this harsh reproach, Anne began to weep bitter tears.

At the moment when an angel was appearing to Anne to announce to her that she would be a mother, another heavenly messenger, says the legend, was showing himself to Joachim in the mountain where he was tending his flocks, and was giving him, in the name of heaven, the same assurance.

"From your blood," he said to him, "a daughter will be born; she will dwell in the temple, and the Holy Spirit will descend upon her, and her happiness will be above the happiness of other women; her fruit will be blessed, she herself will be blessed and called the Mother of eternal blessing. Therefore, descend from the mountain, return to your wife, and together give thanks to the Lord."

Joachim bowed before him and replied: "If I have found favor before you, sit for a while in my tent, and bless your servant." The angel answered him: "Do not call yourself my servant; we are all servants of the same Master. I will not take the food that you offer me; my food is invisible, and my drink cannot be known by men. Do not press me, then, to sit under your tent, and offer as a holocaust to God the food that you wished to serve me."

Joachim, having offered the sacrifice that the angel had commanded him, returned to his house, where his wife welcomed him with transports of joy. Nine months later, Anne gave birth to a daughter, to whom she gave the name Ma ry, a Marie Mother of Jesus, who appeared to Bertrand. nd whom she nursed herself with her own milk. Saint Anne, according to Suarez and a host of Catholic theologians, gave birth without pain and without shame to the one she conceived without transmitting to her the stain of our origin. And, if it is permitted to suspect that this great soul had learned from the angels of heaven something of the destinies reserved for Mary, where could one find words capable of expressing the joys of her maternal heart, when she gave her milk to the one who would one day give hers to her God?

Anne, says the legend, presented her child at the temple, at that temple from which she had been driven out formerly because of her sterility. Can one understand her maternal pride and the delirium of her joy, in seeing these priests who had previously expelled her come to her with respect? She snatched her child from the hands of the priests who had just blessed her, brought her to her breast, and sang this canticle before all the people:

"I will sing the praises of the Lord my God, because He has visited me and has taken away from me the reproach with which my enemies covered me.

"The Lord has placed in me the abundant fruit of His justice.

"Who will announce to the sons of Reuben that Anne the sterile is nursing?

"Listen, listen, tribes of Israel, behold Anne is nursing!"

Certainly, never has a cry of triumph burst forth with more power, never has a woman's heart leaped with more momentum. What intoxication and noble pride in this call to the twelve tribes, and how this song has an ancient and grandiose form!

Here, the thread of tradition becomes so thin that it breaks constantly, and the remainder of Saint Anne's life is almost entirely conjectural. This mother who had obtained the Virgin from Isaiah after so many fasts and tears, who had received from the Queen of Angels the first kiss, the first look, the first caress, who had surrounded her childhood with so much love, who had carried her in her arms to the Lord and had deposited her weeping in His sanctuary, reappears only for an instant on the scene, and it is to die.

Joachim , who w Joachim Father of the Virgin Mary. as not a craftsman like Joseph, cultivated, by all appearances, the small inheritance of his ancestors, and enjoyed a happy mediocrity. Age and labor wore down his strength. The beloved father of Mary fell gravely ill; he asked for his daughter: Mary came. At the moment when the old man extended his blessing hands, a revelation from on high suddenly made him see the glorious destinies to which heaven was calling his daughter. The joy of the elect spread over his venerable face; he lowered his arms, bowed his head, and died. The last tears that the Virgin shed over this holy patriarch, one of the authors of her days, were barely dry when she had to lament the loss of the other. Saint Anne gathered her failing strength to bless her daughter, commended her to her relatives, and fell asleep in the sleep of the just.

4° Saint Joachim is often painted offering a small lamb at the altar. Legend recounts that, presenting himself at the temple on a feast day, he was pushed away by the priest who declared him cursed by God because of his wife's sterility and unworthy of having his offering accepted. Humiliated thus publicly, the unfortunate husband retired to his country house to avoid the contempt of those who had seen him marked with infamy. It was then that God consoled him by letting him know that he was going to become a father and that his child would be worth, by herself alone, the most beautiful families of which others might boast; 2° an angel announces to him that he is going to become a father; 3° he is represented pensive in the middle of a landscape where sheep are seen grazing, because he had retired to the countryside after the insult he had received in Jerusalem; 4° he meets Saint Anne and embraces her before the Golden Gate, under the walls of Jerusalem. Sometimes an angel accompanies them there. Saint Joachim and Saint Anne had imposed a separate exile upon themselves after the disgrace of the temple. An angel appeared to each of them in the retreat where they had isolated themselves and told them to return to Jerusalem. As proof that God henceforth wished to bless their union, they were to meet under the Golden Gate. Some monuments from the end of the Middle Ages even add to this scene a lily that has its root on the lips of the two spouses, and sometimes the flower that crowns the stem bears a bust of the Mother of Go d. Is it possible to Conception immaculée Marian privilege and central dogma structuring the identity of the congregation. express the Immaculate Conception of Mary in a more graceful manner? 5° Rubens depicted Saint Joachim holding the Virgin, still a child, in his arms.

Saint Joachim was taken as patron by the ancient Confraternities of the Immaculate Conception, no doubt by reason of this way of representing the first instant when Our Lady received life. One of these Confraternities existed in Paris, at the parish of Saint-Séverin, in the year 1561.

## CULT AND RELICS. The tomb of Saint Joachim is still shown today to pilgrims of the Holy Land, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre of Our Lady, in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, on the right side of the high altar, along with that of his spouse Saint Anne and Saint Joseph, spouse of the Blessed Virgin. His body has since been transferred to Jerusalem, and a part of his head is preciously preserved in Cologne, in the Church of the Maccabees. The body of the blessed Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary, transported to France by the boat of Provence from the sepulchral chapel of Our Lady of Jehoshaphat where it rested near that of Saint Joachim, was given, according to an ancient tradition, to the church of Apta Julia, by an illustrious favor of God. The very ancient martyrology of Apt mentions this translation. Trithemius, De laudibus sanctæ Annæ, and Joannes de Montevilla, In itineraio, state that the bo dy of Saint sainte Anne Mother of the Virgin Mary. Anne was transported from the East to the West and deposited in the Gauls. Several voyages to the East, notably that of Father Nau, speak of it. But as the time of persecutions was advancing rapidly, the b lessed Auspice First bishop of Apt who hid the relics. Auspice, first bishop of Apt, hid it in a sort of cupboard made in the wall of the lowest crypt, which still exists today. He placed a lit lamp before the relics which did not go out until 792, the day of their discovery. The holy bishop having then very diligently walled up the crypt, so as to make it impenetrable, and the confidants of the secret, who had knowledge of the place, having died, the crypt remained unknown to men for seven centuries, and the relics of Saint Anne were thus preserved, thanks to the foresight of Saint Auspice, during the irruptions of the Alans, the Suebi, the Vandals, and other barbarians who ravaged Provence, and the horrible devastations of the Saracens, after the total defeat of whom the glorious Charlemagne had the good fortune to discover them.

Charlemagne Charlemagne Emperor of the Franks and uncle of Saint Folquin. came to stay in Apt as the Easter feast approached, after having pacified Provence by the defeat of the Saracens in the plain that stretches between the mountain of Cordes and the hill of Montmajour. The memory of this battle, where the last hope of Islam was destroyed, has been preserved in an inscription in the church of Montmajour-lez-Arles.

The first care of Charlemagne, after his arrival in Apt, was to have the cathedral church, which had been polluted by an impious cult, reconsecrated by Turpin. While an extraordinary gathering of great lords and people attended this solemnity, and while the population spread around rendered praises to God in their rapture on the occasion of his restored sanctuary, the Lord, enveloping the pious vows of the city and the ardent faith of Charlemagne with his love, discovered, by a striking miracle and an unhoped-for favor, the unknown treasure of the relics of Saint Anne.

A young man named John, fourteen years old, blind, deaf, and mute from birth, son of the Baron of Caseneuve, was present in the sanctuary. For some time, this young man was seen to appear to be listening to a certain heavenly warning. Soon he began, by striking on a rise of steps leading to the high altar, to make signs that one should dig deep into the ground, so that, the steps being removed, one might see what was perhaps hidden underneath. The divine office was disturbed by this, without it being in the power of the guards or other officers to restrain this young man. However, all those present being surprised by the novelty of the event, the prince, presaging a miracle, gave orders to comply with the wishes so vividly expressed by the adolescent.

The steps of the indicated ascent were removed at that very hour, and a door closed with large stones was immediately discovered, which presaged something remarkable. The workmen having opened this door with hammer blows, an entrance and a descent of steps were seen which led into an artistically worked underground grotto. It was the crypt where the blessed Auspice, apostle of the Aptésiens, was accustomed to nourish with the holy word and the Sacraments the people who were entrusted to him.

The blind John walked first, indicating the path with such certainty that Charlemagne was obliged to have him held near him so that he would not be trampled under the feet of the curious. The young man always made it understood by gesture that one should dig further into the earth at the part of the wall he was signaling. They finally descended into a long and narrow underground passage; but there an extraordinary light appeared and surrounded those present. The lower crypt being finally opened, while all, full of admiration, looked at a burning lamp placed in front of a sort of walled cupboard, the king himself, the clergy, and the great men of the court ran joyfully toward the mysterious light, which was extinguished immediately upon contact with the air.

Admirable thing! Behold, John, having suddenly his eyes opened, as well as his ears, and his tongue loosened, cries out: "In this opening is the body of Saint Anne, mother of the most holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God."

All the spectators, filled with astonishment, utter a thousand acclamations of joy. However, the most pious king orders the niche to be opened. Immediately an odor similar to that of balm spreads, and the sacred deposit, attested by such a great miracle, appears enclosed in a cypress box, wrapped in a precious veil, and certified by this inscription: "Here is the body of the blessed Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary." The box opened, a sweet odor spread in both crypts for the confirmation of the miracle. Archbishop Turpin, having taken the box, placed it in the arms of Charlemagne to have him kiss it as a sign of joy and consolation.

The pontiff gave thanks to God, author of this miraculous invention, who had manifested the venerable body of the grandmother of Christ to be the protection and help of the city of Apt.

Charlemagne ordered that the account of all the facts, as they had happened, be recorded in writing, and that it be referred to the sovereign Pontiff, by whom they were approved by a diploma that he issued. The emperor, wishing nevertheless to inform the first Pope Adrian of it, wrote him a letter which is still possessed.

During the Revolution, the precious relics kept at Apt were not profaned. A portion of the gifts offered by pilgrims escaped the social upheaval and are today the ornament and glory of this church.

It is from the city of Apt that all the relics of Saint Anne, which one can see and venerate now elsewhere, have come.

The Visitation convent of Chartres has the good fortune of possessing a small part of the head of Saint Anne.

But nowhere is Saint Anne as honored as at the pilgrimage that bears her name near Auray, the chief town of the canton of Morbihan , in Auray Famous pilgrimage site in Brittany. the arrondissement of Lorient. This pilgrimage, long forgotten, was renewed in 1624. Saint Anne, as has been confirmed by the most numerous and meticulous legal inquiries, appeared several times, in several places, at various hours of the day and night, to Yves Nicolazic, a farmer of the parish of Pluncret, near Auray, in t he diocese of Yves Nicolazic Breton farmer and witness to the apparitions of Saint Anne. Vannes, and of the village of Kerauna (a word which means, in Breton, the same thing as the city of Anne, in French).

Nicolazic owed a reparation to Saint Anne on behalf of his ancestors. For they, while cultivating the piece of land of Bocenou, where there still remained vestiges of the ancient chapel of the Saint, had from time to time pulled out cut stones which they had amassed, and with which the father of Yves had built, in 1614, a barn where one could distinguish stones that had served for some church window. Sometimes Yves Nicolazic heard a great noise, and found himself surrounded by a great light, in the midst of which Saint Anne appeared to him. Sometimes he saw this Saint who, at night, walked before him, a torch in her hand. Sometimes, he perceived only the torch and the hand that held it. The grandmother of the Savior had the form of a venerable lady, dazzling with beauty, with clothes white as snow. She informed him that, in the Bocenou, there was formerly a chapel dedicated to her name, ruined for nine hundred and eighty-four years and six months (that is to say, the year 699). She desired that this chapel be rebuilt. Guillemette le Roux, wife of Nicolazic, rising from bed on March 6, found on her table, at the very place where her husband had previously seen a hand with a lit candle, twelve quarter-ecus, currency of France, some of which were from the year 1613 and others of unknown date, marked at various corners with letters that no one could explain. Later, these mysterious pieces were disputed as objects of devotion. Finally, Saint Anne ordered Nicolazic to go into the field of Bocenou, where he would find, at a place that would be indicated to him, a statue that represented her. Indeed, he left with witnesses, led by a light that those of his companions who were in a state of grace saw, and, at the place where this light stopped, they found, by digging, a wooden statue representing Saint Anne. Some time later, the barn of which we have spoken, and which was covered only with straw, was entirely consumed by fire, without anyone being able to extinguish it, no matter what quantity of water one threw upon it. The fire did not spoil anything that was in the barn, nor the heaps of rye sheaves that were very close to it, although the wind should naturally have carried the flame there. It was therefore both a punishment and a blessing. The image of Saint Anne soon attracted an innumerable crowd of pilgrims; with their offerings, a chapel was built: it was embellished by the religious of the Order of Carmel, who established themselves in this sanctuary on December 21, 1627; King Louis XIII gave them a relic of Saint Anne in 1639. Urban, by his bulls dated September 22, 1638, granted great indulgences to the pilgrims and to the Confraternity of Saint Anne of Auray. The religious were driven out in 1792, their convent and their church sold, the image was broken and burned, only one piece of the face escaped destruction; one can still see it in the pedestal of the new statue. The church and the convent, repurchased in 1815, were entrusted to the Jesuit Fathers who established a minor seminary there. They were expelled in 1828. Since that time, the house of Saint Anne has not changed its purpose; it is still the ecclesiastical school of the diocese of Vannes, and devotion still attracts numerous pilgrims to its church. Saint Anne is also in great honor in German Lorraine. In the diocese of Nancy, near Albestroff, chief town of the canton of Meurthe, in the arrondissement of Château-Salins, one notices a magnificent Romanesque chapel of quite recent date, but built on the site of other monuments dedicated to Saint Anne. This cult towards the grandmother of Our Lord Jesus Christ is of such remote origin in this part of Lorraine that one cannot easily assign a date to it. From the 13th century, we find, at the place that occupies us, a chapel dedicated to Saint Anne, which had, according to tradition, determined its own location. Today this place of pilgrimage has become even more important since it is enriched with an illustrious and precious relic of Saint Anne, coming from Apt, in Provence.

We have used, to complete this biography, *La vie et le culte de sainte Anne*, at Girard, bookseller in Lyon, 1809; *La Dévotion à sainte Anne*, by X. Mathieu; *Nos locales fondus* by M. Armand, card.-archpriest of Apt, Barrier, vicar-general of Chartres, and Clément, secretary to Mgr Fédique of Nancy. — Cf. *Les gloires de sainte Anne d'Auray*, by the Abbé Bernard; *Vie des Saints du diocèse de Troyes*, by the Abbé Deler; *l'Hagiologie Nivernoise*, by Mgr Crosnier.