You're listening to

Catholic sprouts

The daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, sprouts, today is Monday, March 17th, 2025. And I probably don't need to tell you that today is also St. Patrick's Feast Day. Now, in case you don't know, St. Patrick was a saint who lived in the three and four hundreds.

He was born in modern day England, but when he was still young, he was kidnapped by Irish pirates,

brought back to Ireland and enslaved for many years. At the time, Ireland was a pagan country, meaning they worshipped false gods, and many of

their religious practices were not only false, but they were brutal, including human sacrifice.

Eventually, God directed Patrick to escape.

He sent him a dream, and he miraculously boarded a ship,

returned to England, and back home he discerned a call to the priesthood. When he was ordained,

he began to feel the nudge to go back to Ireland, this place where he had been treated so poorly

so that he could bring the message

of Jesus Christ. So he did. He went back as a bishop of Ireland, even though there were

no Christians there at the time. But he got to work. He famously confronted the pagan chieftains.

He had dramatic 40-day fasts. He cast the snakes out of Ireland,

and eventually he won many hearts for Jesus. He also baptized with his own hand many future

saints, including one of my favorites, St. Bridget. So today we celebrate St. Patrick,

the missionary, evangelist, and bishop of Ireland. Now this week on the Catholic Spouts podcast,

we are returning to our series, the ABCs of the Catholic faith. We are almost done with our series,

actually. We are on the letter S this week, which stands for soul. So as you likely know,

human beings are both body, which we can see and touch when we meet someone else. We can

see and touch their body. But also that body is

...