To go against the church in one of her commands is to spurn her authority altogether. It is strange that people should make, of their own wits or fancy, distinctions between the precepts of the church, when the church makes and acknowledges no such distinctions. The authority in all cases is the same, and, therefore, the commands are all equally binding. Yet how many Catholics who would scruple to eat meat on Friday or miss Mass on Sunday think nothing at all of breaking, without reason, the fast and abstinence of Lent, and give no heed whatever to the obligation of going to confession and communion in Easter-time! {174} It really looks, to judge from their conduct, as if this Easter duty was not on an equal footing with the other commands of the church; as if the church did not mean what she prescribes. Now, the truth of it is, to this precept is attached a more severe sanction than to any other. The church makes any Catholic who violates it liable to excommunication, and deprivation of burial in consecrated ground. So you see the obligation is very strict and the church is terribly in earnest about it, if you are not. To take matters in your own hands, as so many Catholics do on this point, and call little what she calls great, and slight an order that she is so anxious about, is to be a heathen, or, at any rate, a Protestant; it is to set your private judgment above her authority; it is to despise God, who commands through her. If you would only take this view of it--and this is the true view to take--you would think more than once before you would say: "O pshaw! any other time will do. Once a year? All right; I find it more convenient to go at Christmas." No, any other time will not do; once a year will not do, unless it be just now at this time. Christmas is a glorious feast, and Christmas-tide a joyful season, but it is not the season prescribed by the church for your annual communion; and, heathen that you are, your convenience is not the main point to be considered. The question is: has the church power from God to command me, and what does the church command? {175} Oh! then, my brethren, let not the penances, the prayers, the instructions, the special graces of this holy season go to naught and be of no avail; but rather let them lead you up to the end for which they are intended--that is, to bring you to repentance for past sins, amendment for the future, to restore you to the friendship of your God, and strengthen you, for further battling in life, with the bread of heaven, his most precious Body and Blood. ---------------------- Sermon XLIX. _He saith: I will return into my house whence I came out._ --St. Luke xi. 24.