What folly it is for us to imagine that God can have a dwelling-place in our sin-stained soul! How can the Holy Spirit find pleasure in one who by mortal sin has made himself God's enemy; who has been guilty of a deliberate act of rebellion against his Maker and been unfaithful to or left unheeded his own sweet drawing? {273} Alas for us, if this Pentecost finds us in this awful state! Alas! if the voice of our conscience has been silenced; this day then brings no joy to us! The Holy Spirit has no abiding-place within our souls. We have not loved the Son because we have not kept his words: "He that loveth me not keepeth not my words." And because we have not loved him the Father and he will not come to us. The loving Holy Ghost is not master in our house; we have driven him out who was our best friend and thrown open the gate to our enemy. Will you remain thus, you who are in sin? Let not this day go by and to-morrow find you unrepentant. Grieve for your past offences, keep the law of God, and you shall have the fulness of the Holy Spirit. ------------------- Sermon LXXXI. The Easter Duty. In this great feast and its octave, my dear brethren, we commemorate the last of all the wonderful events which brought the Christian religion into the world. To-day our Divine Saviour, having ascended into heaven, fulfilled his promise in the descent of the Holy Ghost upon his Apostles; to-day the Catholic Church was fully established, and given power to convert the world; to-day the order of things was begun which is to last to the end of time. And with this octave closes, therefore, that especially holy part or season of the year which centres round the resurrection of our Lord, and which has, for most obvious reasons, been appointed as the time in which every Christian is bound, under pain of mortal sin, to receive Holy Communion, or make, as we say, his Easter duty. {274} Only one more week remains in which to attend to this most important of all the obligations of a Catholic, to fulfil this greatest precept of the positive Christian law. Now, what is exactly this precept of the Easter duty? Strange to say, you will often find people who do not seem to have any clear idea about it at all, in spite of all that is said about it from the altar and in common catechisms and books of instruction. And yet it is very simple. It is just this: Every Catholic of sufficient age to receive Communion is bound to receive it on some day between the first Sunday of Lent and Trinity Sunday--that is, a week from to-day--inclusive; and it is very difficult for any one to have any excuse from complying with this law.