Saint Joachim
Father of the Theotokos and husband of Saint Anne.
Biography
Joachim belonged to the tribe of Judah and was a descendant of David; he lived as a private citizen in Jerusalem. He married Anne, daughter of a priest from the tribe of Levi, but the couple remained childless into old age.
According to tradition, first recorded in the apocryphal Gospel of James, Joachim withdrew to the desert and fasted for forty days; an angel then promised both husband and wife that they would have a child, Mary.
Joachim died at 92, eight years after his daughter's Presentation in the Temple, and Anne followed him eleven months later. The Church keeps their synaxis on 9 September, the day after the Nativity of the Theotokos.