Today, September 9, the Orthodox Church celebrates Joachim and Anna, the holy ancestors of God, parents of the Virgin and grandparents of Christ. Their story is marked by long barrenness, a condition which in biblical imagination often carries the weight of shame. But the very lack that seemed a curse became the sign of blessing. The womb that remained closed for years was revealed as the the soil chosen for the seed of the Spirit.
In them the paradox of salvation is unveiled: sterility is the waiting ground of promise. When we meditate on their feast, we enter the mystery of the soul in its arid state, bereft of centre, lacking the Logos, and we see how in that void the Divine descent makes Itself known.
I. The Barren Womb as Figure of the Soul
The sterility of Anna, like that of Sara, Rebecca, Rachel, and Elizabeth, is never a mere biographical note. It represents the soul without the Word. Closed upon itself, it is like a womb that cannot conceive. It has movement and appetite, it turns in cycles, but it does not generate fruit of eternity. It is a prison without a centre. The barren womb mirrors the human condition when left to its own resources.
The prayer of the barren is much more than a request for progeny. It is the cry of the soul when it discovers its own impotence. Joachim and Anna embody this. They fasted, mourned, and prayed, until the Angel appeared. Their story tells us that human strength has boundaries and that the heart discovers its incapacity. In that recognition the opening is prepared. Only when one ceases to pretend that it can generate the promise from its own depths does it become receptive.
Paul in Galatians 4:22-27 interprets this mystery in the light of the two covenants. The child of the bondwoman is born according to flesh. The child of the free is born according to promise. Agar is the law of necessity. Sara is the impossibility turned fruitful. “Rejoice, thou barren,” he cites from Isaiah. In this lies the whole paradox: it is in desolation that fecundity is promised.
II. The Promise and the Descent of the Word
The conception of Mary in the womb of Anna is fruit of promise. Only because the womb had been long closed does the child appear as pure gift. The same paradox shines in the conception of Isaac from the body of Sara, in the birth of Samuel from Hannah, and in the cry of Elizabeth in her old age. The Divine pattern repeats itself: the place of emptiness becomes the cradle of abundance.
This is the law of the Spirit. Fecundity comes from above. It is not manufactured by the psyche. The Logos descends and touches the void. The sealed womb becomes a vessel. The arid desert becomes a field that bears harvest. The virgin soil that never knew seed becomes the ground of new creation. The paradox is always the same: the human incapacity is not abolished, but it is transfigured.
The Orthodox Church venerates Joachim and Anna not merely as pious figures but as archetypes of this mystery. Their marriage becomes a vessel in which the promise of salvation takes root. Their sterility is the veil behind which the Spirit conceals the preparation. When the time comes, the veil is torn and the Virgin appears.
III. The Filius Philosophorum and the Virgin
The alchemists spoke of the filius philosophorum, the son of the philosophers, as the gold born from the Work. This child is never the product of natural generation. It comes forth from the materia prima that seemed dead, dark, and sterile. In the sealed vessel, the vas hermeticum, the impossible birth takes place. The barren matter, touched by the fire of the Art, yields the incorruptible metal.
The parallel with the mystery of Anna is striking. The womb closed for years becomes the vessel of the Spirit. The daughter born is the outcome of Divine promise. Mary is the filius philosophorum in living form. She is the fruit of the Spirit. She is the gold refined in the vessel of barrenness. Her birth shows that the impossible is the only true field of promise.
Sterility, in Scripture and in alchemy, is not a malediction. It is a stage of preparation. It is the silence before the Word. It is the desert awaiting rain. The desert blooms when the hidden fire descends. The sealed vessel opens when the Light enters. The child of promise is always born in this way: not from human potency but from Divine descent.
Fiat Lux.