July 26 - Joachim is Anne's husband and the father of the Virgin Mary. They are celebrated on July 26th in the Roman rite and on September 9th in the East. The canonical Gospels of the New Testament do not name Mary's parents, but the story of Joachim and Anne appears in the apocryphal Gospel of James.
Joachim is described as a rich and pious man who regularly gives to the poor and to the temple. However, the couple is childless and mourns. When Joachim goes to a religious feast in Jerusalem, the High Priest refuses Joachim to deposit his offerings, his infertility being a sign that he was under the curse of the Law. Joachim, all covered with shame, did not dare to return home and withdrew into the desert to his shepherds. One day, an angel appears to Joachim and Anne to promise them a child. Joachim returns to Jerusalem; likewise Ann goes to meet him, and they meet at the Golden Gate, one of the gates of the city walls. Joachim and Anne hug each other.
As for Hannah, her parents, Akar and Emeritus, are of the tribe of Levi. They gave birth to Ismenie around 63 B.C. and to Hannah around 55 B.C.. The family settled in Hebron where Isminias married and became the mother of St. Elizabeth (the mother of John the Baptist). When Anne was nine years old, her parents moved to Jerusalem where Akar had responsibilities in the Temple. After a twenty-year childless marriage with Joachim who retired to the desert in the monastery of St. George of Choziba. But an angel announced to them the coming of a child and Anne gave birth to Mary. They had made a vow and took Mary when she was three years old, or a little later according to other traditions, to the temple in Jerusalem to be educated there by Zechariah, a high priest.
In 550, a church was built in Constantinople in honour of Saint Anne. July 26th probably marks the anniversary of the dedication of this basilica. The Franciscans inscribed it on their calendar on July 26, 1263. Spreading throughout the Mediterranean basin, its cult was steadily growing from Marseille and especially Apt in the 12th century, which became a centre of piety. The Cathedral of Sainte-Anne d'Apt, placed throughout the Middle Ages under the double patronage of Notre-Dame and Saint-Castor, is an ancient French Roman Catholic cathedral, located in the city of Apt. It is one of the oldest churches in the West to have honoured the cult of Anne, the ancestress of Christ. Already during the 12th century, her feast day was celebrated there on July 26th during a nine-lesson service. Some of her relics, which tradition says were brought back from the East, are still venerated there. And those which are in Brittany, notably in Sainte-Anne-d'Auray, Italy or Canada come from Apt.
