“And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.”
And then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying — the eighty-four years of age or widowhood communicate the extraordinary length of Anna's faithful waiting. Never left the temple: the single-minded devotion of her later life is entirely temple-oriented. Night and day fasting and praying: the sustained intercessory prayer that defines her decades of waiting. Anna is the Jewish tradition's archetype of the faithful widow whose entire existence is oriented toward God's house.
Church Fathers on Luke 2:37
Simeon had prophesied, a woman united in marriage had prophesied, a virgin had prophesied, it was meet also that a widow should prophesy, that there might lack no sex or condition of life, and therefore it is said, And there was one Anna a prophetess.
The Evangelist dwells some time on the account of Anna, mentioning both her father’s tribe, and adding, as it were, many witnesses who knew her father and her tribe.
Or because at that time there were several others who were called by the same name, that there might be a plain way of distinguishing her, he mentions her father, and describes the quality of her parents.
Read all 9 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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