Today, July 26, Feast Day of the ‘Mother of the Mother of God’

Today is the feast day of “Good Saint Anne” the mother of the Mother of God.

Father Feeney preferred to call Saint Anne “the mother of the Mother of God” rather than “the grandmother of God”, as we read often in articles about our beloved saint.

Why? Because he wanted to use Saint Anne to give more honor to her daughter, Our Lady. Calling Saint Anne “the mother of the Mother of God” does that. Does it not? I think so. It is so much more reverent and deferential to the Blessed Mother’s  singular greatness.

She is the mother of the Immaculate One. Just as Jesus is unique so is His Mother.

One would find it peculiar to refer to Saint Joachim, whose feast day is also today (along with his wife’s) as the “grandfather of God.” Not that he isn’t. He and Saint Anne brought forth their only child, Mary, in normal marital wedlock. Nevertheless, by divine inspiration, they knew that this child was not theirs, so to speak, but God’s special Immaculate one. So, when Mary was three years old they put her under the care of the holy women at the temple, among whom was another Anna, whom Mary would greet at the Presentation of the Child Jesus there eleven years later. This Anna is called a “prophetess” in the Gospel of Saint Luke. No doubt it was this Anna who taught Our Lady so many things in her years at the temple. Can we not imagine that was she who read the scriptures with Mary and prayed with her the Canticle (1 Kings 2:1-10) of yet another Anna, the mother of the prophet Samuel, whose own canticle inspired the Magnificat of the Mother of God?

Jesus had no human father, but it is certainly not wrong to say, in honor of Our Lady, that He had a human “grandfather”, the father of the Mother of God. Jesus is of our race, son of Adam, son of David, and Son of God.

Nevertheless, Saint Joseph, son of David and heir to his father’s throne, is greater than all men in Our Lord’s genealogy. By far. He is the foster-father of Our Lord, chosen to be the protector of Mary and Jesus. His title as “foster-father of Jesus” is the greatest title of all next to the “Mother of God.”

Saints Anne and Joachim pray for us!