According to the ancient tradition of the Church, since Saint Anna, the Ancestor of God, was barren, she and her husband Joachim remained without children until old age. Therefore, sorrowing over their childlessness, they besought God with a promise that, if He were to grant them the fruit of the womb, they would offer their offspring to Him as a gift. And God, hearkening to their supplication, informed them through an Angel concerning the birth of the Virgin. And thus, through God's promise, Anna conceived according to the laws of nature, and was deemed worthy to become the mother of the Mother of our Lord (see also Sept. 8).

The majestic Church of the Resurrection, built by Saint Constantine the Great and his mother Helen, was consecrated in the year 336. In the year 614, this edifice was destroyed by the Persians, who set fire to it. Modestus, the Abbot of the Monastery of Saint Theodosius, and later Patriarch of Jerusalem, rebuilt the church in 626 and had it reconsecrated. In 637, Jerusalem fell to the Moslems; however, the holy shrines were left intact. But in 934, on the Sunday of Pascha, the Saracens set fire to part of this church. Again in 969, the Moslems set fire to the dome of the church, plundered all the sacred objects that were found therein, and surrendered John IV, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, to the flames. In 1010, the Moslems, under Hakim the Mad, Caliph of Egypt, destroyed the church to its foundations, but in 1028, by the mediation of Emperor Romanus III Argyrus of Constantinople, the church began to be rebuilt on a more modest scale. This third edifice was completed and reconsecrated in 1048. In 1099, the crusaders took Jerusalem and ruled there for eighty-eight years, and during this time they made certain changes in the structure, which, for the most part, has remained unaltered ever since (See also Sept. 13).