Tim Staples shows how Mary asking Gabriel how she could conceive a son reveals that she and Joseph had pledged perpetual virginity through their entire marriage.
Transcript:
Host: Katie on Facebook Live asks, “It came up in a small group of mine that Mary and Joseph had vowed to live a chaste, abstinent life before they were to be married and would continue this choice within their marriage. I’d never heard this before and was wondering if you might have some insight as to where I might find this information.”
Tim: Sure. In fact, I recommend, Katie, you get a hold of my book, “Behold Your Mother: A Biblical and Historical Defense of the Marian Doctrines.” In that book, I go into great detail on this in the section on the perpetual virginity of Mary. And I cite in there, among many other things, Pope Saint John Paul the Great’s “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women,” where he teaches this, the idea that really goes as far back as you want to go in the writings of the fathers.
From the very earliest writings of the fathers we discover this idea that in Luke chapter 1, beginning in verse 26, where the angel Gabriel comes down to Mary to announce to her that she’s being called to be the mother of the Son of God the Messiah, if you go down to verse 33, “whose kingdom will have no end,” right, that leads to the question that that Mary asks in verse 34: “How shall this be, for I know not man?” Now from the greatest minds of the fourth century, you find St. Jerome, St. Epiphanius, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Epiphanius, if I didn’t mention him–and others; “the question itself betrays the vow,” you know, that’s kind of the refrain.
And why is that? Because we know that Mary and Joseph were already married; they already have had what we would call in Catholic theology today a “ratified union,” like on August 26th of 2000, the greatest day of my life, when I married the most beautiful woman in the world, when we exchanged vows, we were married. Even though we had not had conjugal relations yet, that marriage was a real marriage. That’s akin to what happened at the espousal.
So Mary and Joseph were already spouses, they had had the espousal; and that’s what makes the question so out of the ordinary, because if this was an ordinary marriage, and the angel says “Hey Mary, you’re gonna have a child,” she wouldn’t be surprised. She wouldn’t be saying “Hey, how shall this happen, for I know not man?” She would know how it’s gonna happen: through a normal conjugal relationship with her husband.
But the fact is she had this vow that Pope John Paul talks about, again, in “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women.” I don’t remember the paragraph, but it is in my book, you’ll get it there, that she already had this vow of virginity. Our Lord had prepared her for this special union, and also Joseph; Joseph is kind of in the image of Abraham the Patriarch. He doesn’t have full understanding what’s going on here, but he knows God has called him into this unique relationship.
And so again, I encourage you to check out my book, I go into a lot more detail on that, but that leads to all sorts of other fun stuff I wish we had time to get into.