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.