Post-feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God. Holy and Righteous Forebears of God Joachim and Anna. Holy Martyr Severian (321-23).
Galatians 4:22-31. Luke 8:16-21.
Read Galatians 4:22-31
Today we celebrate the ancestors of God, Joachim and Anna, who are the principle human agents in yesterday’s great feast of the nativity of their daughter, the Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary.
They were a couple profoundly faithful to the Lord, keeping His law and commandments. They were also childless deep into old age, far beyond Anna’s childbearing years. By a miracle, they conceived of the most wonderful daughter ever to be born. (To be clear, Mary was conceived via the usual means, unlike Christ; the miracle was due to Anna’s advanced age).
The birth of the Mother of God, and subsequently her Divine Son, signalled the end of the Old Covenant and the beginning of the New.
Paul likens living under the Old Covenant to being a child of Hagar. Why is this significant? Hagar was Abraham and Sarah’s servant, a woman under bondage. When Sarah could not conceive, she convinced her husband to have a child with Hagar, and he did, and the child was Ismael, the father of the Arab race. The children of the Old Covenant are therefore children of Abraham, but also children of the bondwoman and not truly free.
Children of the New Covenant are, on the contrary, likened to Isaac, who was Sarah’s son—Abraham’s wife and a freewoman. We are therefore free in Christ as children of a freewoman.
Rejoice in that freedom! Rejoice that the Lord has come and set us free from sin and death and opened to us the gates of paradise closed by our father Adam. And this began with Mary, who was born of Joachim and Anna.