Elizabeth: Name Day and Patron Saint

St Elizabeth was the wife of the priest Zacharias and, like him, a descendant of Aaron; Church tradition remembers her as a sister of St Anna, the mother of the Theotokos. The Gospel calls the couple righteous, walking in all the commandments of the Lord, yet they grew old without children, a sorrow that in those days was counted as a reproach. When God at last gave her a son, she kept her joy hidden for five months. Then her young kinswoman, the Virgin Mary, came to share it. At Mary’s greeting the child leapt in Elizabeth’s womb, and, filled with the Holy Spirit, she became the first to greet Mary as the Mother of her Lord. When the boy was born, she declared, again by the Holy Spirit, that his name was John, though no one in the family bore that name. Tradition tells that when Herod sought to kill the infant, Elizabeth fled with him into the hills; as the soldiers drew near she prayed with tears, and the mountain opened and hid mother and child. She died forty days after her husband was killed in the Temple, and the Lord kept John safe in the wilderness until he appeared to Israel. The Church keeps her memory on 5 September (18 September on the Old Calendar). The faithful ask her prayers as a mother who waited long, who welcomed the Mother of God with joy, and who shielded her child from harm.

What the faithful pray for

• those who wait and hope for a child
• mothers expecting a baby
• children in danger and their protection
• joy and welcome toward family and kin
• patience and trust in God’s time