Anne and Joachim

 

Today the Church of England remembers Anne and Joachim, the maternal grandparents of Jesus. They aren’t mentioned in the Gospels, which do not concern themselves with the childhood of their daughter, Mary. While the stories told about them are late, and utterly unreliable, their names pass down to us because Mary was not a storybook character lifted off the virgin page but a flesh and blood person, at the heart of the early Church: her story was known, if not written down.

This year we remember Anne and Joachim against a backdrop of the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, and a great many little interviews with the families—back home—of our medal hopefuls. Parents and grandparents, who have invested in their daughter or son for a lifetime, un-noticed, unheralded, that they might shine. Unable to witness their triumphs in person; unable to console them in defeat. These little interviews are a nation’s thank you. As is the Church’s commemoration of Anne and Joachim.

Today is a day to celebrate grandparents, without whom we are—literally—nothing; and the investment of ‘spiritual grandparents in the faith,’ whom we may never have known, but whose story shapes our own.