MIRACULOUS MIRACLES^™

Prayer — Prayers of the Saints

Prayer to St. Joachim

Indulgenced by Leo XIII, 20 March 1886

To the father of the Blessed Virgin and grandfather of Christ: 'thou wast chosen from among all the saints to co-operate in the divine mysteries, and enrich the world by bestowing on it the great Mother of God.'

The Prayer

English · Original

O great and glorious patriarch St. Joachim, how I rejoice to think that thou wast chosen from among all the saints to co-operate in the divine mysteries, and enrich the world by bestowing on it the great Mother of God, most holy Mary! By this singular privilege thou hast become so powerful with the Mother and the Son as to obtain whatever graces may be necessary for us.

With great confidence, then, I have recourse to thy most powerful protection, and I commend to thee all the wants of my family, both spiritual and temporal, as well as my own; and especially I appeal to thee for the particular grace which I desire and expect from thy paternal intercession.

And since thou wast a perfect model of the interior life, obtain for me interior recollection and a distaste for the fleeting goods of this earth, with a lively and persevering love of Jesus and Mary. Obtain for me, too, devotion and sincere obedience to Holy Church, and to the Supreme Pontiff who governs her, so that I may live and die in Faith, Hope, and perfect Charity, invoking the most holy names of Jesus and Mary, and may save my soul. Amen.

Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be, three times.

When the Prayer is Said

On 26 July, the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne; for grandparents and for families; for those long childless.

History & Background

Neither Joachim nor Anne is named in Scripture. Their names come from the Protoevangelium of James, a second-century document the Church does not hold as canonical, and everything told of them — the childless years, the rejected offering, the angel at the Golden Gate — comes from there. What the Church does hold is that the Mother of God had a father and a mother, and that they are in heaven.

This prayer keeps to what can be said. It honours Joachim for one thing, the singular privilege of having given the world the Mother of God, and reasons from it that he is 'so powerful with the Mother and the Son as to obtain whatever graces may be necessary for us'. Leo XIII indulgenced it in 1886, on the same day as the prayers to St. Anne. The text is the Raccolta's of 1910.

Their joint feast is 26 July. Joachim's was kept separately on 16 August until the calendar of 1969 joined them.

Indulgences Attached

Three hundred days, once a day — Leo XIII, 20 March 1886 (Raccolta, 1910, no. 316).

Related Saints

St. Joachim

1st century BC – 1st century AD

St. Anne

1st century BC – 1st century AD

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