I just started a thread asking for help in answering my daughters doubt in the ever virginity of Mary. The doubt arose from a gospel reading of all places. Specificly Matthew 1:24-25.
24
When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.
25
He had no relations with her until she bore a son, 12 and he named him Jesus.
My daughter is questioning her faith in part because she is dating a protestant boy. What do you say to this?
HELP!!!
The Douay-Rheims footnote for Matthew 1:25 by Bishop Challoner in 1752 pretty much clears this problem up, and with indirect explanation using Scripture:
"
Until she brought forth her first born son: "From these words, Helvidius and other heretics most impiously inferred that the blessed virgin Mary had other children besides Christ. St. Jerome shows, by diverse examples, that this expression of the Evangelist was a manner of speaking among the Hebrews: to denote by the word ‘until’ only what is done, without any regard to the future.
Thus it is said (Genesis 8:6-7) that Noah sent forth a raven, which went forth and did not return
until the waters dried up on the Earth; that is, it did not return. Also, (Isaiah 46:4) God says “I am until you grow old” - who dares infer that God should then cease to be (once you are old)? Also, in the First Book of Machabees (5:54), ‘And they went up to mount Sion with joy and gladness and offered holocausts, because not one of them was slain
until they had returned in peace.’ That is: not one of them was slain either before or after they returned.
God says to His divine Son: ‘Sit on my right hand until I make thy enemies thy footstool’ Shall He no longer sit at the right hand of God after his enemies are subdued? Yes, and for all eternity.
St. Jerome also proves by Scripture example that an only begotten son was also called firstborn, or ‘first begotten’; because, according to the law, the first born male was to be consecrated to God. ‘Sanctify unto me, saith the LORD, every firstborn that openeth the womb among the children of Israel.’ "
St. Jerome was one hard-hitter of a major saint!
