Did Mary Have Other Children?

[00:00:01]Welcome to The Morning Offering, your daily call to prayer. Pray with us every day right here on the podcast and in your inbox. Learn more at morningoffering.com.

[00:00:11]>> Hey y'all, welcome to your morning offering. My name is Father Brad Doyle and today is July 21st, Tuesday the 16th week in ordinary time.

[00:00:19]Let's pray.

[00:00:20]In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[00:00:25]O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day for all the intentions of your sacred heart in union with the holy sacrifice of the mass throughout the world for the salvation of souls, the reparation of sins, the reunion of all Christians, and in particular the intentions of the Holy Father this month.

[00:00:46]Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

[00:00:51]Probably get this question often, so we're going to answer it.

[00:00:55]Matthew chapter 12, while Jesus was speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers appeared outside wishing to speak with him. Someone told him, "Your mother and your brothers are standing outside."

[00:01:07]I don't know why that guy sounded like that.

[00:01:10]Well, I wonder what people sounded like.

[00:01:12]Anyway, at they're asking to speak to you.

[00:01:17]Someone might say, "Well, who's the brothers?

[00:01:20]Who are these people? I thought Mary you Catholics say that Mary's perpetually a virgin."

[00:01:26]Now, in the past I've I've gone into the scriptural evidence for Mary's perpetual virginity and and an explanation of the uh the Greek and then the Aramaic roots of all the words and brother and cousin are the same thing and yada yada yada, but setting that aside, we've talked about that. You can go find that.

[00:01:45]Why this doesn't necessarily mean he had blood brothers through Mary, like half brothers.

[00:01:52]I'm just going to go to the church fathers.

[00:01:55]We don't have to make stuff up.

[00:01:58]What did the early church believe? Well, here is a little catena aurea, a golden chain of church fathers. The majority of early church fathers believed that Mary was perpetually virgin. It's been uh a belief of the church since the earliest centuries.

[00:02:14]So, if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me, right?

[00:02:19]The Protoevangelium of James.

[00:02:22]Um this is not scriptural, but it's a good representation of early church belief, right? Written about AD 120.

[00:02:30]It's actually where we get the names uh Anna and and Joachim from, like Joachim being the father of of Mary.

[00:02:39]It's not from the Gospels, so it's just tradition. You don't have to believe you don't have to It's not a doctrine that Mary's dad's name Joachim, but in the Protoevangelium of James, that's the story. It's kind of filling in the gaps. Maybe it's traditions that were circulating circulating through the early Christian community.

[00:02:59]It says, "And the priest said, 'Mary, why have you done this?'" Actually, the priest thought Mary was breaking her vow.

[00:03:05]"Why have you done this? And why have you brought your soul low and forgotten the Lord your God?" She wept bitterly saying, "As the Lord my God lives, I am pure before him and know not man."

[00:03:16]In another place, and Annas the scribe came to him, Joseph, and saw that Mary was with child, and he ran away to the priest and said to him, "Joseph, whom you did you whom you did vouch for has committed a grievous crime." And the priest said, "How so?" And he said, "He has defiled the virgin whom he received out of the temple of the Lord and has married her by stealth." Look at that. So, what does that say? You have to know a little bit about ancient practice on consecrated virginity because what the Protoevangelium of James is saying is that Mary was already previously consecrated as a consecrated virgin.

[00:04:00]And that Joseph would have known this. So, it wasn't so much that Mary that that people thought Mary offended the Lord by having premarital sex, it was that she already made a vow of consecrated virginity.

[00:04:13]That's what the Protoevangelium of James is assuming. Then Hippolytus said this, "But the pious confession of the believer is that the creator of all things incorporated with himself a rational soul and a sensible body from the all holy Mary ever virgin."

[00:04:28]This is in 210 AD.

[00:04:31]By an undefiled conception without conversion and was made man in nature by but separate from wickedness.

[00:04:38]So, again, these are tangential references, but Hippolytus isn't talking about the perpetual virginity of Mary, but he's assuming He's assuming. He's not defending it.

[00:04:48]He's just saying this is what Christians believe.

[00:04:53]Let's see. Let's go to all the way to Augustine.

[00:04:57]And being born a virgin of a virgin who chose to remain a virgin even before she knew who was to be born of her, Christ wanted to approve virginity rather than to impose it.

[00:05:10]Approve it rather than impose impose it.

[00:05:12]That's cool. And he wanted virginity to be a free choice even in that woman in whom he took upon himself the form of a slave. Okay.

[00:05:21]This is Saint Augustine saying it's fitting that Mary chose to be a perpetual virgin even before the incarnation because the weight of the incarnation and being the mother of God would have it would have been like yes, she had to be.

[00:05:39]But instead, she chose it because she didn't even know who she was going to have. Do Do that make sense? Hopefully, it does.

[00:05:47]The main point is that Augustine, Hippolytus, the Protoevangelium of James, Ambrose of Milan, Didymus the Blind >> [laughter] >> Man, that's that's a rough name. Jerome Epiphanius of Salamis Athanasius, Hilary of Poitiers, Origen They all believe Mary was perpetually a virgin. So the church has has believed.

[00:06:14]So, obviously, we must read Matthew through that light. This has been your reflection for today. If it was helpful for you, go to morningoffering.com and sign up. We'll be in your inbox every morning. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be [music] glad in it.

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