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Homily for the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne, 26 July 2024, Mt 13:18-23
An elderly couple like Abraham and Sarah, that’s the kind of image that Christian tradition gives us of Joachim and Anne. They were a couple already resigned to their infertility, but were eventually blessed with a child in their old age.
The child born to Abraham and Sarah in their old age was Isaac, who would later become the father of Jacob, ancestor of the whole Israelite nation. The child born of Joachim and Anne in their old age is a girl named Mary, who would later become the mother of Jesus, whom Christianity would confess as Son of God and Redeemer, not just of one nation but of all humanity and of all creation.
The Virgin Mary, born of the barren couple Joachim and Anne, becomes the very image of fecundity (of fruitfulness). Christianity would regard her as the New Eve, the mother of the God-man whom she will carry in her womb, the mother of the Church, the community of disciples called to a new humanity in Christ.
Our Gospel today interprets the parable of the sower and turns the image of the many different types of soil into an allegory for various types of hearers of the Word of God. The highlight, of course, is the rich soil that represents those who welcome the Word of God with open minds and open hearts.
The key to both our readings today is openness to the seed of God’s Word. First, this would apply to Joachim and Anne, whose openness to God’s Word brings about the blessing of a daughter—the Virgin Mary. Then of course it would apply to Mary, and that encounter with God’s Word through the angel Gabriel, which would bring about Mary’s conception of Christ in her womb—that moment of the annuciation when she welcomed God’s word not just into her heart but into her womb, and allowed God’s Word to became incarnate inside her because she had said, “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to your Word.”
Henceforth, she would become the rich soil on which the seed of God’s Word takes root and bears abundant fruit for all humanity. This is what Jeremiah, the prophet, is foretelling in his oracle in our first reading. How God will appoint shepherds for Israel, after his own heart, by whose wise and prudent shepherding, the chosen people would be made to “multiply and become fruitful in the land.” Jeremiah foretells a future when he says, “people will no longer say, “The ark of the covenant of the Lord.” He says, “They will no longer think of it or remember it, or miss it or make another.” Why? Because a woman would become the “new ark of the covenant” and bear within her the Christ who unites in himself both divinity and humanity and will gather all nations to honor the name of the Lord at Jerusalem.
