The Conception of the Blessed Virgin Saint Mary

August 13, 2016

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church celebrates the conception of St Mary on Nehasie 7 (August 13). Church manuscripts such as the Synaxarium and Teamire Mariam (Miracles of St Mary) provide some details about St Mary’s parents. 

According to those documents, the father of Mary is named Joachim, and her mother is called Hannah. The righteous couple had produced no child even at the later stage of their lives for Hannah was barren, and they were very sad because of that. Infertility was a cause of shame in those days, and drew insults such as, “O you who lack the blessing of God.”  

Joachim and Hannah were sad due to that, and thus devoted themselves to rigorous prayer and fasting, in isolation to entreated God day and night for a child. They also vowed that if they brought forth a child, they would offer him/her to serve in the Temple of God. 

One day when Joachim was in the sanctuary praying and kneeling in supplication, slumber descended upon him and he slept. While Joachim was napping St Gabriel, the angel of God, appeared unto him, and said to him, “Behold, your wife Hannah shall conceive, and she shall bear you a daughter, and in her shall be joy and salvation for the entire world.” 

Joachim then woke up, went to his house, and told his wife the vision he had seen in the temple. Accordingly, Hannah conceived, and brought forth our holy Lady, the Virgin Mary, the God-bearer, the object of boasting of the entire world. St Mary’s role in the salvation of humanity is profoundly central as she is the one who conceived and brought forth Our Savior Jesus Christ. 

Source:    
• Ethiopic Synaxarium, Nehasseie 7 (August 13). 
• Miracles of St Mary (the book of Teamire Mariam), 1989:16.