Q&A: Will you explain how the help we get from Mary does not contradict our free-will?
Father Roger Charest, SMM
In the same way that grace influences our free-will, “fortiter et suaviter,” firmly and sweetly. Someone wrote to us recently that he had begged Our Lady to help him get rid of a sinful habit. This sin had an irresistible attraction for him. Now things are different. For that sin he feels nothing but distaste.
All of us must humbly confess that in such or such an occasion of sin we could never triumph. But somehow or other that occasion of sin never materializes. The Blessed Virgin, in mysterious ways keeps from us the temptations to which we would surely succumb. And in this round-about way the freedom of our will is always safeguarded. “Mary, the good Mother of the predestinate, hides them under the wings of her protection, as a hen hides her chickens” (T.D. 210) .
