obey their parents or despise their direction, they are despising God’s grace.  Remember that nothing teaches us so well as experience.  Now your parents, even if God gave them no special grace, have experience.  They have been children as you are; they have been young persons as you are; they have received advice from their parents and teachers as you do.  If your parents are bad, it is because they have not heeded the advice given them.  If they are good, it is because they have heeded and followed it.  The years of your youth quickly pass, and you will soon be thrown out into the world, among strangers to provide for yourselves, and will perhaps have no one to advise you.  If you neglect to learn while you have the opportunity you will be sorry for it in after life.  If you waste your time in school, you will leave it knowing very little, and an ignorant man can never take any good position in the world; he can seldom be his own master and independent; he must always toil for others as a servant.  God gives us our talents and opportunities that we may use them to the best of our ability, and He will hold us accountable for these.  It is good and praiseworthy to raise ourselves and others in the world if we do so by lawful and proper means.  You may have the opportunity of getting a good position, and will not be able to take it because you are not sufficiently educated.  Many young men live to be sorry for wasting time in school, and try to make up for it by studying at night.  You cannot really make up for lost time.  Every moment God gives you He gives for some particular work, and He will require an account from you, at the last day, for the use you made of your time.  Besides, you can learn with greater ease while you are young.  But what shall I say of neglecting to learn your holy religion?  If you neglect your school lessons you will not be successful in the world as businessmen or professional men; but if you neglect your religious lessons, you will be miserable, not merely in this world, but in the next, and that for all eternity.  Again, will you not feel ashamed to say you are a Catholic when persons who are not Catholics ask you the meaning of something you believe or do, and you will not be able to answer?  When they tell falsehoods against your religion, you will not, on account of your ignorance, be able to refute them.  Almost the only time you have to learn the truths and practices of your holy religion is during the instructions at Sunday school or day school, and after a few years you will not have this advantage.  When you grow up you may hear a sermon, and if you attend early Mass, only a short instruction, on Sundays; and if you do not know your Catechism, you will be less able to profit by the instructions given.  Therefore the time to learn is while you are young, have sufficient leisure, and good, willing teachers to explain whatever you do not understand.