This coming Sunday (new calendar), we celebrate the Sunday of the Forefathers. It’s always wonderful to hear about them. You might not have heard so much about Christ’s impressive lineage of Foremothers: at least three generations of holy women who had a unique and direct experience of God.
The icon here depicts Saint Mary, the great-grandmother of our Lord; with her daughter St. Anna, the grandmother of our Lord; and St. Anna’s daughter the Theotokos, the mother of our Lord, who holds in her lap her Son and our God, Jesus Christ.
Little is known about St. Mary (also known as Miryam or Mariam), the great-grandmother of Christ, but tradition tells us she was the wife of a priest named Matthan, from the tribe of Levi and lineage of Aaron. Her name is likely related all the way back to the bold prophetess Miryam, Aaron’s sister, and was passed on to the Theotokos as the continuation of that line. Mary/Maria/Miryam can mean “beloved” or “elevated,” but it can also mean both “‘Daughter of Rebellion’ and “Hope of Change.” How beautiful that this fiery, courageous, and noble heritage was handed down to the Theotokos like a mantle to inhabit, woven by the generations of mothers past who accompanied their unique place in the history of salvation.
It was this heritage that St. Anna, the grandmother of Christ, continued to weave and live through a life of generosity and persistent hope. Married to St. Joachim, the two were childless into their old age and chose to give two-thirds of their income away to the temple and the poor, carrying the grief of their infertility with compassion for the griefs and wounds of those around them. After one final sorrow drove them to beg God for the miracle of a child, offering that child to serve the Lord, their prayers were answered by the message of an angel: the first indication that this child would indeed hold a unique place in the story God was writing in the world.
That child, the Theotokos, was named after her grandmother and great-grandmothers past, taking on the mantle woven by their lives and wearing it with a God-centered attentiveness and openness that would later lead to her great Yes, the axis on which Christ’s coming turned.
Today, as we continue walking the path of this Nativity season, a season of expectation and waiting, we wait accompanied by these three women and the many who came before them: fiery, courageous, patient, noble, generous, and wise, they were attuned to the workings of God in their own lives and were willing to act according to that knowledge. May we too follow them into refusing all that would diminish Christ’s life in us and actively hoping for change in the way we live, with the Theotokos as our champion and guide.
Holy Foremothers of Christ, pray to God for us!