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Rev. Msgr. Andres Santos Valera, H.P.
San Jose, Hagonoy, Bulacan
Miyembro, Kapatiran ng
Kapariang Taga-Hagonoy, Inc. |
Today
we celebrate the feasts of Sts. Joachim and Anne. The feast of Sts.
Joachim and Anne are especially celebrated in the Eastern Church. It
is then celebrated on September 8 together with the birth of Mary. It
was then that the Emperor Justinian built a church in honor of St.
Anne in Constantinople (modern day Istanbul, Turkey) that the feast
was celebrated in the West. You will not find the names of the
parents of Mary in Sacred Scripture, they are rather in what we call
extra-biblical sources which we call the apocryphal
books. It is in the Protoevangelium of St. James.
Another
feast also comes from the reference of that book, that is the
memorial of the presentation of Mary in the temple. These teaches us
something about our faith and about the teaching of the Church, that
we should not get carried away when people say it is not in the
Bible. Why? Because not all our teaching are really in the Bible.
There are two sources of our teaching: Sacred Scripture and Sacred
Tradition and Magisterium. Thus this feast is based on Tradition and
Magisterium which the Bible really affirms because Scripture says in
the Gospel of John that not everything is written in Sacred Scripture
(cf. Jn. 20). And hence we celebrate the feast which came from such
apocryphal books like the Protoevangelium of St. James.
The
feast reminds us that there is an importance in family and in the
values taught in the family. In science books there are always talks
on nature vs. nurture. Nature
is something you inherit, nurture is something you are taught as you
are taken cared of. Yet I believe these two are gravely important
because not only nature but
nurture is as well
celebrated on the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne. The Office of the
Readings present St. John Damascene, a renowned Doctor of the Church
who have presented the Sts. Anne and Joachim teaching the Blessed
Virgin Mary. In a sense, this is also informative, but you know it is
not only the parents are the teachers. I know a family who has taught
everything good to their child, only to find out that the child was
doing something wrong. The father was asking, Where did we
go wrong? I said to them, You
are not the only teacher, there are others. There are the friends of
your son and the environment that he has.
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A painting from the author:
St. Anne Conceiving the Blessed Virgin Mary
A work of Flemish painter Jehan Bellegambe the Elder
(1470 - 1536) |
It
is then important to know that the first teachers should come from
the family, which is why Sts. Joachim and Anne are given importance
today. This is also the time to pray for the elderly. As we know in
our diocese, Sts. Joachim and Anne are considered as the Patron
Saints of Senior Citizens. It is
in present society that we should give them more and more importance.
Once I went to Trinoma, it
was on a Tuesday and that was the day when the Quezon City government
gave tickets to senior citizens. I
was on the movie house and it smelled efficacent oil because when you
get old you would put efficacent oil on your body. When I was there I
said to myself, there would be a time I would smell like
this efficacent oil. It was very
near for me. So it in this sense that we should understand how old
people are. In a sense, we should give them love and understanding.
This is why we celebrate the feast today, to give importance to the
elderly in our community.
People
would tell us that, maraming matatanda ang tinatawag na
matatanda dahil marami silang natatandaan. Hindi iyong nakalilimot
sila. We should learn from them
what they have experienced. In the lessons I give on the liturgy,
specifically on the Sacrament of Penance, in the Pontificale
Romanum Germanicum, that when
penitents come back to the Church, its not a young deacon that calls
them but an old deacon. He calls people back to the Church. My
students then asked why. And I said that when you are old, you
influence people more and they are more patient.
As
we celebrate the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne, let us thank the
Lord for giving us our ancestors. We thank God for our grandparents.
We thank the Lord that like them, we too may be like the Lord. Like
Anne, whose name means “grace” we may also be an instrument of
grace for others. Amen.
Photo Courtesy of : John Andrew C. Libao (National Shrine and Parish of St. Anne)
