Against Celsus 8.21

Let us see also what Celsus says next about God, and how he urges us to partake of what are, in truth, offerings to idols, or, if I may so call them, offerings to demons, but what he would call sacred offerings, since he does not know what is truly sacred and what kind of sacrifices are so. What he says is this: “God is surely common to all, good, in need of nothing, and free from envy. What, then, prevents those most devoted to him from sharing in the public festivals too?” I do not know what he imagined in thinking that sharing in the public festivals by those devoted to God follows from God's being good, in need of nothing, and free from envy. I say that sharing in the public festivals would have followed from God's being good, in need of nothing, and free from envy, if it had been shown that the public festivals contain nothing erroneous and were established from a contemplation of God as consistent with his service and worship. But if the festivals, public in name only, have no demonstrable reason as suited to the service of the divine, but are shown to be the inventions of those who established them, however it happened, on account of certain human stories, or because they seemed to contain natural philosophy about water or earth or its fruits, it is clear that those who wish to worship the divine with understanding would act reasonably in not sharing in the public festivals. For “a festival,” as one of the Greek wise men says well, “is nothing other than doing what one ought”; and he truly keeps festival who does “what he ought,” always praying, continually offering bloodless sacrifices in his prayers to the divine. That is why this saying of Paul seems to me most magnificent: “You observe days and months and seasons and years? I am afraid I may have laboured over you in vain.”