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." {182} 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. {183} He said: "Gather them up, _lest they be lost_." "Well, then," a prudent housekeeper would say, "the reason is plain enough. It was to teach us economy--not to let anything go to waste; to save the scraps, and make them up into bread-puddings and fish-balls." I know you do not think that was it. Most people who are not forced to this kind of economy are apt to turn up their noses at it, and connect it in their minds with a stingy disposition, which they very rightly think is not pleasing to God. But, after all, I don't see what it could very well have been but economy that our Lord meant to teach. I don't see what other meaning you can get out of his command to gather up the fragments, that they might not be lost. If that does not mean economy, what does it mean? No, my brethren, economy, or a saving spirit, is not such a contemptible thing when rightly understood. There may be stinginess with it, but stinginess is not a part of it. Economy, rightly understood, is setting a proper value on the gifts of God.