Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion [1908]

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Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion - 1908


THIRTY-FIRST OBJECTION. GOD HAS FORESEEN FROM ALL ETERNITY WHETHER I SHALL BE SAVED OR LOST. I MAY DO WHAT I WILL; I CANNOT CHANGE MY DESTINY.

Answer. Suppose your wife were to say to you, "My dear, God has foreseen from all eternity whether you will dine to-day or not. I may do what I will; it will happen as God has foreseen. I go, therefore, to take a promenade, and your dinner will prepare itself as it may."

Or if one of your children were to say, "My dear papa, God has foreseen from all eternity whether I shall work to-day or play the truant. Do what I will, I cannot change my destiny; so I will go and amuse myself, instead of going to school."

I think you would not be puzzled to reply to them, and especially to bring them to reason.

What you would reply to your wife and child, I will now reply to you.

The fore-knowledge of God does not destroy our liberty. And although our feeble reason cannot thoroughly solve this great mystery, it still knows enough about it to be certain of its truth.

1. First, we have all an inward conviction, in spite of all arguments, all sophistries, that we are free in all our resolutions.

I feel in writing these lines that it depends on my will, to place one word here instead of another, to continue or break off my work, etc. You who are reading, you feel, and nothing can convince you to the contrary, that it depends on yourself whether to read this book or close it, to sing or to be silent, to rise or remain seated, etc. You and I, then, are free agents.

2. In the second place, is it as difficult, really, as it appears, to reconcile our moral liberty with the fore-knowledge of God? I do not think it is, and I only see in it a question of words.

We measure God by our standard, we speak of Him as of ourselves. We invest Him in our minds with our weaknesses; and thereby create for ourselves chimerical difficulties.

There is not, to say truth, any prescience in God. Prescience or foresight is to see beforehand, to see what will one day happen. To foresee is to suppose a future, not yet arrived. Now there is neither future nor succession of time with God, but an eternal and immutable present. The past and future exist only for finite beings subject to change. We, human creatures, foresee; but that is just one of the imperfections of our being. God, the perfect being, sees, He does not foresee.

He sees us act. Now I never heard of any one saying, that the actual knowledge that God possesses of our actions was in any way a restraint on our liberty. Very well, my friend, God has no other but that.

This appears to me very simple, very easy to comprehend. There now only remains the mystery of God's eternity and immutability, or rather, the mystery of His existence. But who would ever be mad enough to say, I refuse to believe in God, because I cannot comprehend the infinite? Use, then, your liberty, under the eye of a merciful God, who will render to every man according to his works.

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Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion - 1908


THIRTY-SECOND OBJECTION. IT IS NOT WHAT GOES INTO THE MOUTH THAT DEFILES THE SOUL. GOD WILL NEVER DAMN ME FOR A MORSEL OF MEAT. MEAT IS NO WORSE ON FRIDAYS THAN ON OTHER DAYS.

Answer. You are quite right: it is not the meat which would condemn you; meat is as harmless one day as another. What does condemn you is disobedience, which is the cause of your eating meat on those days.

The wrong done on Friday is the violation of a law which does not exist for other days; it is the revolt against the legitimate authority of those pastors whom we ought to obey as representing Him who sends them: "Go, I send you forth. He who heareth you heareth Me; he who despiseth you despiseth Me."

It is not, then, a question of any particular food or day, or of the palate; but of the sin incurred by refusing to obey a law at once obligatory and easy to keep.

Besides the great and general motive for observing all the laws of the Church, we may further urge that these laws are not made at random, or through caprice; they are based on solid and important reasons.

Thus the law of abstinence, the application of which occurs every week, is designed to recall incessantly to the Christian's recollection the Passion, sufferings, and death of the Saviour, as well as the necessity of doing penance; it is the public practice of penance among Christians, etc.

None but the ignorant and superficial can regard this institution as useless. It is incredible how efficacious in practice is this simple observance of abstinence on Fridays in retaining the soul within the sacred influence of religious ideas.

The laws of the Church, although binding on pain of sin, are far from being harsh or tyrannical. The Church is a Mother, not an imperious mistress. It is quite sufficient that serious and legitimate reasons prevent your observing abstinence, to insure its dispensation in your case. The Church desires to do you good, not to do you harm. She desires to make you expiate your sins, not to make you ill. Illness, weakness of constitution, the fatigues of constant hard labor, extreme poverty, great difficulty in procuring abstinence fare; such are the reasons which dispense with this law.

To avoid any mistake, however, it is better to consult beforehand your parish priest or confessor, who are the proper interpreters of the law.

This observation, which extends to all the laws of the Church, shows how wise and moderate is the authority which enacts them. Let us, then, respect this authority from the bottom of our hearts; let us leave those to laugh who know nothing about it, while we fulfil, without murmuring, commandments so simple, so judicious, and so profitable for our souls.

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Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion - 1908


THIRTY-THIRD OBJECTION. GOD HAS NO NEED OF MY PRAYERS. HE KNOWS MY WANTS WITHOUT MY TELLING THEM TO HIM.

Answer. Undoubtedly he knows them; but you would be very wrong if you were to conclude from that that you could dispense with prayer.

God has no need of your prayers, it is true. Your prayers and homage in no way change His eternal beatitude. But He exacts from you this homage, this adoration, these thanksgivings, these prayers; because you, His creature and His child, owe Him these things.

To your thought, of which He is the author, He has a right; He desires that you should direct that thought to Him; and that heart which He has also given you, He has a right to its love, and He desires that, by love, you freely bestow it upon Him.

God knows all your wants. That is also perfectly true. It is not to make them known to Him, that you must acknowledge them to Him. It is that you may not lose sight of your utter helplessness without His succor; it is that you may ever keep in mind your dependence on Him.

It is for your sake that He has commanded you to pray, not for Himself. He wills that you should pray, first, because it is right and just that you should adore your God, that you should think of that Being who ever thinks of you, that you should love Him who is the Supreme Good and your great benefactor; and finally, because it is good, profitable, and absolutely needful for you to pray.

What can be more sublime, what more simple, more easy, than prayer!

It is the noblest occupation of man in this world; it is that which ennobles, exalts, and renders worthy of a reasonable being, all our other occupations.

It is human thought applied to its most worthy object, to God.

It is the heart uniting itself to a God of infinite goodness, of infinite perfection, of infinite love, who can alone fully satisfy it.

It is the child speaking to his beloved father.

It is the friend holding familiar converse with his friend.

It is the pardoned criminal tenderly thanking his Saviour, the weak and infirm sinner praying for mercy to that God who has said, "I will never reject him that cometh to me."

Prayer is our consolation in all our troubles. It is that treasure of inward happiness, which nothing can take away from us. For prayer is in us; it is ourselves, I may say: because it is ourselves thinking of God and loving God.

It is the same with prayer as with the love of God. It is a thing so sweet and consoling, that God, in imposing this obligation on us, has only commanded us to be happy.

Thus, our Lord Jesus Christ, who came into the world to render us happy by rendering us good, recommends to us nothing so much as prayer: "Pray without ceasing," said he, "and do not weary." That is, accustom your soul to think of God, and to love Him above all things. Prayer is the very foundation of the Christian life.

Pray, and with earnestness; not merely with your lips, but from the bottom of your heart. Be faithful in rendering to God your filial homage at the beginning and at the close of the day.* Pray in your troubles; pray in your dangers; pray in your temptations. Pray after your faults and falls, to obtain their pardon. Pray in all the principal circumstances of your life.

Mingle your daily actions with prayer. Thus accompanied, nothing is insignificant before God; nothing is lost for Paradise. You will be pure and good, if you have constant recourse to prayer. Your heart will be at peace. In the midst of the sorrows of this life, you will have that internal joy which alleviates their bitterness; and when the time of your probation is at an end, you will reap a hundredfold the fruit of your faithfulness.

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Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion - 1908


THIRTY-FOURTH OBJECTION. I PRAY, AND DO NOT OBTAIN WHAT I ASK FOR. I ONLY LOSE MY TIME.

Answer. Did St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, lose her time, when, during sixteen years of prayers and tears, she sought of God what she at last obtained — the conversion of her son?

Did St. Francis de Sales lose his time when he labored during twenty-two years to attain meekness of heart?

Perseverance is one of the chief qualities of prayer.

Let us never weary of praying! God often seems to be deaf that we may cry to Him more loudly and more frequently. He seems to hide from us in order that we may feel His absence more sensibly, and appreciate better the sweetness of His presence.

Let us recall the promise of our Divine Master. "Seek, and you shall find." We shall find, we are assured that we shall find. But we are not assured that we shall find immediately. St. Monica, that woman full of faith and perseverance, found her desire only after the lapse of sixteen years, and it is her unshaken constancy which sanctified her. The Canaanite woman in the Gospel obtained her child's life after asking three times, and this delay, so painful to the heart of a mother, was the trial and the triumph of her faith . . .

Let us, then, never be weary. In the very hour, perhaps, when our courage forsook us, God was at hand to help us!

The very moment in which we lost courage was, perhaps, when God was just about to come to our aid.

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Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion - 1908


THIRTY-FIFTH OBJECTION. WHAT HAVE I EVER DONE TO OFFEND GOD THAT HE SHOULD SEND ME SO MUCH TROUBLE?

Answer. "Man of little faith," who understandest not the secrets of God! When He visits you with suffering, never, I beseech you, propose to Him that dreadful question, "What have I done to offend you, that I should thus suffer?"

It is very seldom that He could not reply to you, by spreading out before your terrified eyes, a long and frightful list of sins, which your religious indifference veils from your observation, and the eternal pains of hell which these sins have merited a hundred times over!

He might always reply to you by recalling to your recollection the terrible flames of purgatory, by reminding you that none are holy in His sight, and that the mitigated pains of this present life are very trivial in comparison with the expiation that is to come.

He might always reply by showing to you the Paradise where He now dwells, the manger at Bethlehem, the cross; and by telling you that your journey through this world is but a passing condition of trial; that He has given to you the example of patience, so that by the holy use of suffering, you may sanctify your soul, and accumulate on your head a great amount of glory in eternity.

He might recall to you those oracles which fell formerly from His divine lips.

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye shall weep and mourn, while the world rejoices. But your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in labor hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but when she has brought forth the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. So also, you now, indeed, have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice; and your joy no man shall take from you." . . .

Whatever you may be, a just man or a sinner, endeavor to appreciate the adorable mystery of suffering! To suffer is to receive a familiar visit from God! Suffering is the most precious gift of His mercy.

It is the crowning mark of His love.

God had no more excellent gift to give to His only Son, Jesus; to Mary, His Mother, the best beloved of all His creatures; to His saints, His martyrs, and to all His faithful.

If you suffer with Jesus Christ, you will be crowned with Him. It is by means of the cross that we attain to glory.

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Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion - 1908


THIRTY-SIXTH OBJECTION. WHAT IS THE USE OF PRAYING TO THE VIRGIN MARY? IT IS GREAT SUPERSTITION. BESIDES, HOW CAN SHE HEAR US?

Answer. Tell me, how can you hear me?

I hear you with my ears.

I know that; it is not exactly what I asked you.

I ask you how you can hear me with your ears?

I move my lips; they slightly stir the air; and this air penetrates into your ear, and there is arrested by a little bone covered with skin, and called the tympanum of the ear. And this is how you hear what I say to you!

How is that brought about? What connection is there between the breath of air on the tympanum, and my thoughts which become manifested to your mind? If we did not daily witness this fact, we should certainly never credit it. It is, nevertheless, very certain that such is the case.

Well! when you have explained to me, how you, who are two paces distant from me, can hear me, and enter into communication with my thoughts when I speak to you, I will explain to you how the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, who are in heaven, can hear my prayers and answer them.

The same God who makes you hear me, makes them hear me, when I ask them to intercede for me to Him.

By what means does God effect this? It signifies little to me. What I know is, that it is the case; that God does make known to the Blessed Virgin, whom He has raised, alone among all His creatures, to the wonderful dignity of his mother, to her whom He gave to us to be a Mother, an advocate, and a protectress, when He died on the cross, that He does make known to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the prayers, and the wants of His people; that He always listens to the intercession of Her whom He loves above all the works of His hands; that He still comes among us through Her, as He did on the day of His Incarnation, and that the surest way to reach Jesus, is to go to Mary, who presents us before Her Son and our God, thus covering by Her protection our unworthiness and our imperfect dispositions.

What I also know is, that there is nothing more soothing, more cheering, more consoling, than to love the Blessed Virgin, to confide to Her our troubles, and to offer Her our hearts.

And, furthermore, that devotion toward Her makes us better, renders us chaste, pure, meek, humble, makes us love prayer, gives joy and peace of heart. . . .

What I know is, that in loving and serving Mary, I am only imitating, though very imperfectly, our Saviour Jesus Christ Himself.

He was the first who loved His mother; so good, so holy, beyond all creatures; He first ministered to Her, and rendered Her all sorts of honor, of duties, of obedience.

And as He said to me on the eve of His death, "I have given to you an example, so that what I have done, you may also do," I endeavor to love and honor in the most perfect manner the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom He so perfectly loved and honored.

This is not the proper place for a treatise on devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

But it is, however, the place in which to say that hatred to this particular devotion has been the universal mark of all heresies, of all religious insurrections; that Mary is never despised and forsaken without our soon seeing Jesus forsaken; and even that we never see any one neglect or lessen his devotion in order to become better, or to become better in consequence.

It must be said that the poor Protestants are much to be pitied that they do not know and love their Mother! . . . that they do not receive Her whom Jesus Christ has chosen, has loved, has united inseparably to the mystery of His incarnation, to the mystery of His manger in Bethlehem, to those of His infancy, of His hidden life, of His public life, to the mystery of His sufferings, and of our redemption; Her whom He associates in heaven with the adorable mysteries of His glory and His royalty.

They must surely tremble, when, casting their eyes over the history of all Christian ages, they find none which does not condemn their silence, and which has not realized the prophetic language of the Blessed Virgin herself: "All generations shall call me blessed." (St. Luke, c. i.)

Nowhere do we perceive that solitary Christ dreamed of by Luther, Calvin, and their disciples, but Christ as He appears in the eyes of the prophets, as He appears in the gospel histories, the Son of the Virgin, formed of her flesh and blood, borne so long in her womb and in her arms, fulfilling toward her, for a period of thirty years, the duties of the most obedient Son, expiring before her eyes, and again resting in her arms before being removed from the cross to the sepulchre. . . .

They seem to fear that they shall rob Jesus Christ of all the veneration that they pay to Mary. But does it not betray a great want of knowledge of the human heart, which is formed in the image of that of God, to fear to wound a friend, by showing, for his sake, a great affection for his mother? Is it not for the sake of the Son that we love the Mother? And is it not to Jesus Christ that all this homage returns?

Now, that there may be abuses of this principle, and some extravagances among the ignorant relative to this devotion to the Blessed Virgin, who denies? What is there, however holy, which has not been sometimes carried to excess? But these abuses are reproved by the Church. The bishops and clergy take suitable measures to remove such excesses among the faithful, as soon as ever they come to their knowledge.

In all that regards devotion to Mary, believe me, the most usual extreme is quite on the other side, she is too little venerated rather than too much. For any honor short of adoration (and she must not be adored; adoration is due to God alone) can hardly be too great for her. We shall never honor her in so eminent a degree as God honored her in making her His Mother. We shall never love her as much as Jesus, our model, loved her.

As Catholics we are the great family of Jesus Christ. Is it, then, astonishing that we should love His Mother?