In this first conference, which is just called sacramentality of marriage and the universal

call to holiness, I want to begin by talking about marriage as nature.

And it may be a strange thing to do, but I want to start by talking about the marriage of Joseph

and Mary.

And the reason is this.

Aquinas died. Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican, you know, 13th century, and I promote his son and also study it.

Thomas Aquinas died before he could compose his final treaties on the sacraments. He was writing the part on the Eucharist and the Confession when he had a mystical experience and stopped writing

and died shortly thereafter. So he doesn't have a late treatment of the subject of marriage.

But the place in his late writings where he does write about the nature of marriage is interestingly

on the questions on the Virgin Mary, where he asks, did Mary and Joseph have a true human marriage?

It's a reasonable question because the tradition teaches, the church solemnly defines,

but the Virgin Mary remained virgin after her conception and after the birth of Christ.

And so Joseph and she lived in perpetual continents or celibacy.

So in other words, they didn't have conjugal relations.

So how can it be a marriage?

It's a good question.

And so you might say, well, that's a very peculiar place, father, to start talking to married couples about the ideals of marriage

by taking the Holy Family insofar as it's hell of it.

But that's not what I'm doing.

What I'm doing is I'm trying to look at the nature and definition of marriage,

which he gives in the first paragraph of the text I've just given you,

because he says something here he doesn't say anywhere else,

...