beautiful chapel, to receive that strengthening food, that miracle of
God's love. Remember it always: this is the happiest day of your lives!
You are still innocent and about to receive the Bread that raises the
dead, cleanses sinners and purifies the fallen. You are still in your
first youth, without experience of life, and are already allowed to
approach the Holy Table and share the strengthening food that supports
men and women in the trials of life. This also is the propitious moment,
the mighty hour in which Our Lord can refuse you nothing that you ask
Him. So make use of it, ask Him much, ask Him everything: for your
parents and your masters, who have done so much for you, for your
pastors, your village and especially for yourselves, that He may keep you
from sin and continue to dwell in your hearts and allow you to grow up
into stout champions of the faith and of your religion. It is the
happiest day of your lives. You are here now, to-day, with your bright,
clear eyes, young and beautiful as angels; we have watched over you,
sheltered you against all that could have harmed or offended your
innocence, far from the corrupt world of whose existence you have not
even known. But to-morrow you will enter the wide world, with only your
weak flesh to fight against life's dangers: depravity, falsehood, lies
and sin. Now life will begin for you, now for the first time will you be
called upon to fight, to show courage and to stand firm. How many of
those who once sat where you are now sitting and who were pure and
innocent as yourselves have now, alas, become lost sinners, Judases who
have rejected their God, devils as roaring lions going about seeking whom
they may devour! Be strong, listen to your good parents: it is to them
alone that you will have to listen henceforth...."

He turned round to the other side and, continuing with the same rise and
fall in his voice, the same gestures of his thin right arm, with the
flowing white sleeve, and the same movement of his sharp profile high up