Hannah's Most Illustrious Child

The Catholic Thing

By Michael Pakaluk But first a note: Be sure to tune in tonight - Thursday, November 21st at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss the Vatican's new Mayan rite, the U.S. bishops on President Trump's position on the deportation of immigrants, and other developments in the Universal Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.
Now for the column...
For Catherine Ruth
The Virgin Mary's mother was called "Hannah" in Hebrew, but we know her as "Anne" through the Latin via the Greek. This Hannah and her husband, Joachim, according to old tradition, confirmed since by popes, brought their daughter, Mary, to the temple when she was a girl, to dedicate her to God. The commemoration of this "Presentation of Our Lady" is the feast which the Church celebrates today.
You probably have given the feast no attention whatsoever. Maybe you have thought in the back of your mind, "Oh, Mary was presented in the temple the way Jesus was," and left it at that. But of course there was no ritual presentation of first-born female offspring. If Mary was "presented," and this fact was so important that the Church still commemorates it, what was the reason?
I won't say that the most ancient written document in this tradition filling out the story, The Proto-Evangelium of James, is reliable, yet it certainly is very interesting and worthy of your attention. According to this "apocryphal gospel" and others like it, Hannah was barren and for over twenty years begged God for a child.
One day she went to the garden to walk, sat under a laurel tree, and seeing specifically a sparrow's nest in the tree (see Ps. 84:3), prayed this poignant lament:
Alas! Who begot me? And what womb produced me? . . .
Alas! To what have I been likened? I am not like the fowls of the heaven, because even the fowls of the heaven are productive before You, O Lord.
Alas! To what have I been likened? I am not like the beasts of the earth, because even the beasts of the earth are productive before You, O Lord.
Alas! To what have I been likened? I am not like these waters, because even these waters are productive before You, O Lord.
Alas! To what have I been likened? I am not like this earth, because even the earth brings forth its fruits in season, and blesses You, O Lord.
It is a Laudato si' of fertility. She looks upon every part of nature and sees fecundity there. Yet she herself, by her barrenness, is made an alien, an outcast from this "common home." (Observe how different all this is from our "environmentalism"!)
Then an angel appears to her, tells her that she will conceive - which Hannah believes and accepts immediately - and in response she echoes the words of her namesake: "As the Lord my God lives, if I beget either male or female, I will bring it as a gift to the Lord my God; and it shall minister to Him in holy things all the days of its life." (See 1 Samuel 1:11. Note that in Greek infants and young children are referred to with the neuter, "it.")
The Proto-Evangelium is typically quite earthy but about Mary's conception it comments with beautiful simplicity, as regards the father after he came in from tending his flocks: "And Joachim rested the first day in his house." The husband rested in his house and became a father.
After Hannah gives birth, she asks the midwife "What have I brought forth?" The midwife tells her, "A girl." Without any sign of disappointment Hannah, taking up the child, looks at her and exclaims, "My soul has been magnified this day!" And, whatever the worth of this account, it's completely plausible that Hannah knew and later repeated her namesake's song (1 Samuel 2:1-10), and that Mary's Magnificat is her own appropriation of her mother's song.
The tradition continues that Joachim and Hannah wai...