Confirmation and First Communion sometimes sensibly and even
suddenly transfigure a character; but even apart from such choice
instances the gradual work of the Sacraments brings Catholic children
under a discipline in which the habit of self-examination, the
constant necessity for effort, the truthful avowal of being in the
wrong, the acceptance of penance as a due, the necessary submissions
and self-renunciations of obedience to the Church, give a training of
their own. So a practicing Catholic child is educated unconsciously by
a thousand influences, each of which, supernatural in itself, tells
beyond the supernatural sphere and raises the natural qualities, by
self-knowledge, by truth, by the safeguard of religion against
hardness and isolation and the blindness of pride, even if the minimum
of educational facilities have been at work to take advantage of these
openings for good. A Catholic child is a child, and keeps a childlike
spirit for life, unless the early training is completely shipwrecked,
and even then there are memories which are means of recovery, and the
way home to the Father's house is known. It may be hoped that very
many never leave it, and never lose the sense of being one of the
great family, "of the household of faith.
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