Q: What exactly are my Easter duties? My grandparents sometimes talk about “the Easter duty,” but I’m not sure if this was just a pre-Vatican II thing, or something I still need to worry about. (United Kingdom)
A: In broad terms, “the Easter duty” usually refers to a fully initiated Catholic’s obligation to make a good sacramental confession and receive holy Communion every year around the time of Easter.
Pre-Vatican II, this duty seems to have held a great deal of cultural weight within the Catholic community, and I have even heard stories about parish priests in the past issuing special cards or certificates so that Catholics could prove they had fulfilled their duty (despite this possibly being somewhat in conflict with the discretion required to protect the seal of the confessional!).
Today, the church’s law does not mandate an “Easter duty” as such. However, for the most part, the core obligations — namely, going to confession and receiving holy Communion at least once per year — are recognized in other places in the law.
In particular, Canon 920, 1 of the Code of Canon Law states: “Once admitted to the blessed Eucharist, each of the faithful is obliged to receive holy communion at least once a year.” This means that Catholics, after they have received their first holy Communion, are required to do so at least annually.
But of course, it should go without saying that annual reception of holy Communion is legislated as the bare minimum, and not as a blueprint for actively growing in holiness. The church calls the Eucharist “the summit and the source of all worship and Christian life” (Canon 897), and canon law encourages the faithful to receive holy Communion far more often, even “frequently” (Canon 898).
Section 2 of Canon 920 goes on to specify: “This precept must be fulfilled during paschal time, unless for a good reason it is fulfilled at another time during the year.”
Here we see some remnant of the concept of the “Easter duty,” as the required annual reception of holy Communion should happen during the Easter season, which lasts 50 days from Easter Sunday until Pentecost.
Yet this seasonal timing is not an absolute requirement, as the faithful might fulfill this obligation at another time of the year if there is a “good reason” for doing so. The code does not spell out what a canonically “good reason” for this is, and so, like many things in the church’s law, this is left to our good faith and common sense. But a practical example of a good reason for receiving holy Communion outside of the Easter season might include something like residence in a remote area where the sacraments were not regularly available or some sort of serious health concern.
With respect to receiving the sacrament of penance, Canon 989 tells us that: “All the faithful who have reached the age of discretion are bound faithfully to confess their grave sins at least once a year.” That is, all Catholics who have come to the stage in their psychological development where they can rationally make choices for themselves (a stage which is presumed in canon law to occur in normal circumstances at age 7) are obligated to confess any grave or mortal sins at least annually.
This canon does not tie confession specifically or explicitly to the paschal season. Although, since a Catholic cannot receive holy Communion — either during the Easter season or at any other time — if he or she is conscious of unconfessed grave sins, we might see a connection to the “Easter duty” insofar as this annual required confession would prepare a Catholic to receive Communion at Easter.
Note that strictly speaking, Canon 989 does not oblige members of the faithful to confess less serious or venial sins. Though once again, this is meant as the bare minimum, and ideally, we would confess all of our sins much more often.
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