Post-feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God; Holy and Righteous Forebears of God Joachim and Anna; the Holy Martyr Severian (321-23)
Abstention from meat and foods that contain meat.
Galatians 4:22-31; Luke 8:16-21
Read Galatians 4:22-31
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Today as we celebrate the post-feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God, we commemorate Mary’s parents, the holy and righteous ancestors of God, Joachim and Anna. We learn of them through tradition and apocryphal scriptural texts. In the Protoevanglium of James, we read about how Joachim and Anna were grieved by Anna’s barrenness. Joachim recalled how God gave the patriarch Abraham a son in his old age. Joachim went to the desert for 40 days and 40 nights to fast and pray, and Anna also prayed to be able to conceive. An angel appeared to Anna and told her that the Lord heard her prayer, and she conceived a child with Joachim and named her Mary.
Today’s reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians speaks of Abraham’s two sons and how they can be allegorically understood. Abram’s wife Sarai was barren, and so she asked him to conceive a child with Hagar, her Egyptian bondwoman. Hagar conceived and gave birth to a son Ishmael. When God established a covenant with Abram and his descendants, he renamed Abram: “Abraham”, and Sarai: “Sarah.” God promised to bless Sarah and give Abraham a son by her who would be named Isaac (see Gn. 16-17).
Paul writes how Hagar symbolizes Mt. Sinai and corresponds to the earthly Jerusalem. Because she is a bondwoman, her children will be in bondage with her (Gal. 4:25). This is Paul’s way of symbolically expressing that the Jews are in bondage under the Law of Moses. Sarah, on the other hand, was a freewoman and gave birth to Isaac by God’s promise. She is symbolic of the heavenly Jerusalem, of which Paul writes, “the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all” (Gal. 4:26). Paul emphasizes to the Galatians that “we are not children of the bondwoman but of the free” (Gal. 4:31). In baptism we are “born of water and the Spirit” (Jn. 3:5) and become members of the Church, the Body of Christ, the heavenly Jerusalem. We are children of the promise and are not in bondage.
Throughout salvation history, God has worked countless miracles. For the righteous Abraham and Sarah, Joachim and Anna, God granted them to conceive and bear a child in their old age. Ultimately, the Son of God Himself became incarnate and was born from their bloodline. We today still enjoy the fruits of these miracles that God worked in their lives because, from them, our Saviour was born so we too can be born again and become heirs of God’s eternal promise.