Like the Divine Master, she looks down upon the crowd and she has pity on them. She wants to heal the sick; they will not be healed. She wants to feed the hungry; they will not be fed. The church looks round upon the vast crowd of her children and wants them to make their Easter duty; alas! how many neglect it. Why should you make the Easter duty? First, because it is a strict law of the church. If you fail to make it by your own fault you commit a grievous mortal sin and put yourself in a position to be excommunicated from God's church. Secondly, for your own spiritual good. What kind of a Christian can he be who does not go to confession or communion at least once in a year? How shall you make it? First go to confession, and then, when you have received absolution, go to communion. That is all simple and plain enough. Why, then, do some people stay away from their Easter duty? Let us tell the truth. Confession must come first, and confession is the difficulty. A man has been engaged for years in an unlawful business, or he has stolen a sum of money, or he has been the receiver of stolen goods, or in some way or other cheated in trade. Such a man is a thief. He knows it, and he is also aware that if he goes to confession the priest will say: "Give up the ill-gotten money, sell your fine house and your gilded furniture, and make restitution; you must restore or you will damn your soul." They won't do that, won't give up the dishonest gains, and so they won't make the Easter duty. Or there are some who have committed sins of impurity; they have been unfaithful husbands, dissolute wives. They won't give up their bad habits or won't tell their shameful sins, and so they won't make the Easter duty. There are others on whom the fiend of drunkenness has settled; they are always on a spree, always pouring the liquor which stupefies them down their throats; they won't repent and they won't make the Easter duty. Ah! then, if there be any such sinners here—if there be any thieves, if there be any who are living upon dishonest gains, if there be any who are wallowing in impurity and drunkenness—tell me, how long is this going to last? How many more years will you slink away from your Easter duty like cowards and cravens? Will you go on so to the end of your lives? Oh! then you will go down to hell, and your blood be upon your own heads. No one stays away from Easter duty except for disgraceful reasons. There is always something bad behind that fear of the confessional, and such a man deserves to be pointed at by every honorable Catholic. Suppose you have stolen, or been an adulterer, or a fornicator, or a drunkard, or what not. Now is the time to repent, and amend, and make reparation. Don't you see the church looking down with eyes of mercy upon you? Why, then, stay? There can be only one reason, and that reason is because you want to go on being thieves, adulterers, and drunkards. O brethren! do not, I pray you, so wickedly. The church is kind. The blood of Christ is still flowing. The confessionals are still open. Go in there with your heavy sins and your black secrets. Go in there with your long story of sin. Go in, even if your hands are red with blood—go in, I say, and if you are truly penitent you will be cleansed and consoled. Let there not be a single man or woman in this church who can have it said of them this year: "You missed your Easter duty." And you that have been away for years and years, don't add another sin to your already long list of crimes. You are sick, you are fainting with hunger, you are a poor wandering sheep; but never mind, remember Jesus looks with pity upon you, and he will heal your sickness in the sacrament of penance, and feed you with his own Body and Blood.
Rev. Algernon A. Brown.
Sermon LI.
Gather up the fragments that remain,
lest they he lost.
—St. John vi. 12.
It seems rather odd, does it not, my brethren, that our Divine Lord should have been so particular about saving all the broken bits of those loaves and fishes? He had just worked a wonderful miracle, and he could have repeated it the next day without any difficulty. When he or his apostles or the crowd who came to hear him were hungry, he had nothing to do but to say the word, and they could all have as much to eat as they wanted. Why, then, be so particular about hunting up all the crusts of bread and bits of fish that were lying round in the grass?
Perhaps you will say: "It was to show what a great miracle he had worked; to show that, in spite of their all having dined heartily, there were twelve basketfuls of scraps left over—much more than they had to start with."
I do not think that was it. The greatness of the miracle in feeding five thousand men on five loaves and two fishes was plain enough. At any rate, that was not the reason that he himself gave.