Sunday, July 26, 2020

St Joachim and St Anne, parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary

           Francisco Zurbaran, The Immaculate Conception with St Joachim and St Anne, National Galleries of Scotland

"Joachim and Anne, how blessed a couple! All creation is indebted to you. For at your hands the Creator was offered a gift excelling all other gifts: a chaste mother, who alone was worthy of him... Joachim and Anne, how blessed and spotless a couple! You will be known by the fruit you have borne, as the Lord says: By their fruit you will know them." From a sermon by St John Damascene, bishop, after Spiritual Reading, Universalis