Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Saints Anne and Joachim: Celebrating Jesus' Grandparents and My Kids' Grandparents


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On July 26, the feast day of Saints Anne and Joachim are celebrated in the Catholic Church.  Saint Anne and Saint Joachim are our Blessed Mother's parents, which means they are the grandparents of Jesus.  This special feast day is a great day to not only honor the grandparents of Jesus, but also my childrens' grandparents as well!

Our family is blessed to have both sets of grandparents living about 15 minutes away from us on opposite ends of town.  I should have thought to invite my parents and my in-laws over for dinner as a way to celebrate this feast day waaaaaay before this year, but better now than never right?  But, I think this will have to become a feast day tradition each year from now on, God willing!  

I think I was first inspired to celebrate my children's grandparents on this particular feast day because I remember reading Nicole's post at Children of the Church last year where her children honored their grandparents in special ways.

We had a simple celebration and dinner where my children and I set the table "fancy" with some books about St. Anne (which included text on St. Joachim) and we lit a candle with an image of St. Anne and St. Joachim holding their child Mary.  I printed out an image from my computer of the three of them and taped it to a white candle to add to our celebration.  The flowers were used for table decorations, but then each set of grandparents took them home as gifts from our family.  

 The book on the left is Saints and Angels and the book on the right is Picture Book of Saints.

After I read information about Saints Anne and Joachim and said grace we snapped some photos of both sets of grandparents and then of my children sitting in front of them.

My husband's parents on the left and my parents are on the right. 

On the dinner menu we had eggplant lasagna with meat sauce and then lasagna with noodles and meat sauce, salad, bread and ice cream for dessert (with toppings too!)  Before the meal I set out pita chips and Homemade Guacamole from Jessica at Shower of Roses. Her recipe is yummy!  Here is a photo of mine: 


This feast day is also my oldest daughter's "Name Day" because her middle name is Anne like myself and we were both named after my grandmother whose first name is Anne.  So she ate her lasagna, salad and bread on her "You Are Special Today" plate that we try to remember to have our kids eat on when each of my children have their birthdays, baptism anniversaries and name day celebrations. 


We do not know much about the lives of Saints Anne and Joachim and what we do know has been passed down through word of mouth and writings.  For that reason, when I do hear of information about these special parents of Mary, I am very interested.  I loved reading Jessica's post at Shower of Roses about St. Anne's symbolic colors and Martianne at Training Happy Hearts has a wonderful post about how her family celebrated St. Anne with a breakfast where they learn their "faith through food and fun." So inspiring! 

I'll close this post with this beautiful Grandparents' prayer which I thought is perfect for this feast day:

Good Saint Anne and Saint Joachim, 
parents of Mary and grandparents to Jesus, 
be with me and all grandparents 
that we may be wise and loving, 
may share our time and stories and sense of humor, 
and may enjoy and not spoil too much the grandchildren 
who are close to our hearts, 
for they are the sign of God's life to us. 

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, 
be with our grandchildren and all other grandchildren 
that they may love and respect their grandparents 
and all older people, 
may remember to call, 
visit or write, 
and grow in wisdom, 
age and grace before God.

Amen.
 



2 comments:

Martianne said...

What a beautiful table setting you did! I love the photo of your parents and in-laws and the one of your children with them!

The Your Are Special plate is a cute tradition!

My church handed out prayer cards with that grandparents prayer on it some years ago I had completely forgotten about it and now need to see if I can find the prayer card.

We wanted to invite grandparents over yesterday, too, but the one set that lives local was out of town. Instead, we invited friends who had never celebrated a feast day meal with us, and it was lovely.

We are so blessed to be able to share in our faith through simple, special happenings such as feast day celebrations. I love it!

Ooo, and I love the book on the left. Thank you for sharing a link to it. I am going to see if our library has it so I can check out the entire thing and, then, me thinks I might be making another purchase. I am SO ADDICTED to faith-based books!


oh, in all my years I never thought of inviting the in laws or my mom over on this day. Oh, I so should consider that for next year. As you said, better late then never.

Thanks for this....

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