The Easter duty, then, is not merely an obligation to receive once a year. A person may receive a hundred times in the year, and yet not make his Easter duty; just as one may hear Mass every day in the week, and yet not fulfil the precept of hearing Mass if he stays away on Sunday. Now this seems quite easy to understand; but there are people, and plenty of them, too, who will make a mission shortly before Lent, and then say at this time: "Oh! I went to Communion not very long ago; there is no need to go so soon again." They might as well say on Sunday, if they had heard Mass on Saturday: "I need not go to church to-day; it was only yesterday that I was there." The law of hearing Mass is not to hear it once a week, but to hear it on Sundays and holydays of obligation; so the law of Communion is not to receive once or twice a year, but to receive at the time appointed. No other time will do. {275} But some may say: "I have not committed any mortal sin since my last confession; I am just as good as these people who are running to church all the time." Very good, perhaps you are; though it may be that Almighty God does not have so high an opinion of you as you seem to have of yourself. But it is not the question whether you are good or not; the law is not to confess mortal sin at Easter; far from it, one ought to have no mortal sin to confess, then or at any other time. No, the law is to go to Communion. One should get leave to do so, of course; but if you have no sin on your conscience, what is easier than to say so to the priest? You ought to be glad to be able to say it. Do not, then, make the foolish excuse either that you have been to Communion at Christmas or there about, or that you have nothing to confess now. Come this week; if you put your Communion off one day beyond next Sunday you are guilty of breaking this law. If you are in mortal sin, get out of it by making a good confession and Communion; if you are not, do not fall into it by refusing to obey this most peremptory and most urgent command. Any one who has not received since Lent began, and refuses to do so on or before next Sunday, may, indeed, call himself a Catholic, but is not worthy of the name. ------------------- {276} _Trinity Sunday._ Epistle. _Romans xi._ 33-36. O the depth of the riches, of the wisdom, and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and recompense shall be made to him? For of him, and by him, and in him, are all things. To him be glory for ever. Amen. Gospel. _St. Matthew, xxviii._ 18-20.