So in this next talk, I want to change gears a little bit, and I'm going to talk more about the sort of peculiarity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and a little bit about the peculiarity of St. Joseph.

Now, the church teaches that the Blessed Virgin Mary received from even the beginning of her existence,

from the beginning of her conception, a high grace that God had foreseen, and you might say predestined from all eternity,

to prepare her to become the worthy mother of God.

So the business of God becoming human is a rather serious business,

and God started the foundations for becoming human quite early in the life of the Virgin Mary,

giving her

exalted human dignity

as a person full of grace.

We don't know a lot about

the early life of the,

you might say,

the early consciousness

of the Blessed Virgin Mary

as a child.

What was it like to feel and sense life as the Blessed Virgin Mary did when she was six or seven?

What the church does teach is that from the time that the Blessed Virgin Mary began to have a devotional life as a child.

And there are holy children.

There are really holy children.

Like Padre Pio when he was six,

you know about Padre Pio's father?

Padre Pio's father was an Italian immigrant

...