Sts. Joachim and Anne
Patron of grandparents, married couples, mothers, miners, homemakers
Saints Joachim and Anne, parents of the Virgin Mary and grandparents of the Lord Jesus, are not named in the canonical Gospels but are honored from the second century onward in the Protoevangelium of James. They are remembered as a holy and aged couple who had longed for a child for many years before Anne conceived Mary in answer to fervent prayer. Their feast, kept in the East from the sixth century and in the West since the sixteenth, is a celebration of family, of grandparents, and of the long generations through which God prepared the coming of the Savior.