It's the Catholics who tell me that no one knows if they will persevere until the end. Yet you turn right around and say that Mary made a vow to God and knew that she would keep it for the rest of her days. How can that be if no one knows they will persevere? (I'm pinging jokus and forest keeper to this because I believe they were involve it this discussion as well.)
If such is the case as you suppose, and fitting in with the Catholic teaching that NO ONE knows if they will persevere, the natural question for Mary would have been, "...but I am a virgin, does this mean that I will break my vows?" Mary should have questioned her own commitment. It would have been persumptious and arrogant for her to say, "How can this be since I made a vow to God?"
Mary knew that she, by herself, would bring forth a child simply because the angel told her.
First of all, we Catholics distinguish between ABSOLUTE knowledge and "MORAL" knowledge regarding our salvation. We can have a relatively strong sense of our salvation, but we are never absolutely certain - we cannot earn salvation and we are told to persevere until the end. WE! Not God! God EXPECTS US to persevere! We "know" with the graces given us, we can and will succeed. But we also know that there is the possibility of falling away. Even Paul says this of HIMSELF!
If such is the case as you suppose, and fitting in with the Catholic teaching that NO ONE knows if they will persevere, the natural question for Mary would have been, "...but I am a virgin, does this mean that I will break my vows?" Mary should have questioned her own commitment. It would have been persumptious and arrogant for her to say, "How can this be since I made a vow to God?"
We are talking about apples and oranges here. We are now speaking about keeping a vow, not about eternal salvation. But be that as it may, I think we can only speculate on such matters. I personally believe that Mary did not have a "guarantee" that she would do "x" or "y". That is not God's way. She was forced to "ponder in her heart". She had a "sword pierce her heart". She ALSO had to undergo suffering, pain, lack of knowledge and understanding of God's ways. I do not believe that Mary had supernatural knowledge of God's plan, although she certainly would know more humanly than anyone else, because she was around our Savior longer and was given the Angel's word on Whom he child was. But did she know that Jesus would be crucified? Did she "know" she would absolutely hold to her vow of virginity? I think she can be credited with persevering to the end due to her cooperation with God's gifts. I think the Orthodox will agree, as well.
To say what Mary "knew" is difficult to ascertain, so I wouldn't go very far here. From what we do know, I credit Mary as being the ultimate disciple of Christ, who pondered His Word in her heart for many years. She received the Spirit TWICE in a very special way. She was given singular graces and made pure - but whether she "KNEW" that she was Immaculately Conceived, I would not venture to guess.
Regards
"YOU WILL CONCEIVE IN YOUR WOMB..."
And where else would a girl who was going to start living with and "knowing" Joseph expect to conceive but in her womb? This adds nothing to your argument.
Knowing the Scriptures, she knew the account in Judges, where an angel appeared to Sampson's mother and announced to her that she would conceive a child (the angel repeats this "you will conceive" several times. The LXX even says that the angel told her that she would bring this child forth from her "womb." The angel never says anything to Sampson's mother about her husband -- he never once says in this encounter that she *and her husband* would conceive a child. The angel just says she will conceive.
Why wouldn't the Theotokos have taken this example from Scripture and assumed at first that the angel was making a similar announcement to her of an "ordinary" conception?
I'm afraid that unless I'm really missing something here, there is no way to categorically insist on your interpretation unless you come to this passage in St. Luke with a pre-conceived (no pun intended) notion about Mary's intentions in life.
Regarding the patristic commentaries, last night I happened to encounter something quite interesting in St. Theophylact's commentary (which is a 12th century distillation of patristic commentaries on the NT -- heavily based on St. John Chrysostom's commentaries -- very worth reading, and as close to a "standard" commentary as we have in Orthodoxy.)
In his commentary at the end of St. Matthew's Gospel, St. Theophylact is writing about Christ's final words of that Gospel:
"...lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen."
He (a Greek speaker writing for others who read and wrote Greek) takes pains to explain that the word translated as "unto" -- the same one translated as "until" in 1:25 -- does not mean that Christ is only giving assurances to the disciples that he will only be with them to the end of the world. He clarifies that what happens beyond that is *not* unknown to us and that we can be assured of Christ being with us throughout eternity, even though that phrase of St. Matthew could be read precisely in a way that raises the question of the unknown.
He writes this, but does not mention the usage in 1:25. The significance of what I am pointing out is that the usage of this word in 28:20 is apparently such that he felt that it called for some clarification, *independent of its relationship to the usage in 1:25.* He was not saying this in order to prove anything about how 1:25 should be read.
Keep in mind that all of these commentaries were written prior to the Protestant Reformation -- at a time when there was no controversy within Christianity about the ever-virginity of the Theotokos.
And again, these Christian commentators spoke, wrote, thought, studied, debated, and preached in Biblical/liturgical Greek -- and they learned it from their teachers who learned it from their teachers... going back in continuity to the Biblical times in which those texts were written.
I'm reminded of the Watergate hearings, where someone testifying asked how this or that statement could be understood in such a way. The venerable Sam Ervin, with his inimicable Southern drawl replied, "because, son, I speak the English language -- it's mah Muther tongue."
Anyway, we don't need to beat this dead horse anymore, although I'm game (for awhile) to continue with the flogging. :-)
It would have been presumtious to say "I shall not get crushes on boys because I am a nun". There is no presumtion to ask God how his will as regards her can be seemingly contradictory. Mary knew that she, by herself, would bring forth a child simply because the angel told her.
I don't see your point here: "by herself"? She knew that she was going to be a mother in the physiological sense from Luke 1:31, yes. She also knew that she was going to remain virgin, or else she would not have asked the question in v.34. She did not know how to square the two till the Angel told her in v.35.