You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Thursday, October 4th, 2018. It is also the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi. This week on the Catholic Spouts podcast, we have been talking about trust. On Monday, we looked at the profound example of trust that is St. Therese. On Tuesday,

we looked at our guardian angels and how that reminds us that God is with us and he knows us.

Yesterday, we talked about Eve in the Garden of Eden and how her lack of trust led to the original sin,

something that we all have inherited.

Today, with the help of our friends St. Francis of Assisi, we are going to talk about how we need to trust,

even when it's hard, even when it seems crazy,

and especially when we can't see the whole plan. St. Francis of Assisi is an amazing saint.

He is from Assisi, Italy. He was the son of a wealthy merchant. He grew up. He was handsome. He loved to find clothes.

Eventually he went out to the military and after a couple of rounds in the military, he started

to develop a distaste for this world. He didn't care for clothes and friends anymore and instead

was focused more on the spiritual.

So one day he was praying in a broken down chapel, the chapel of San Damiano.

And in that chapel, though the walls were crumbling, there was an icon of the crucified Lord.

Now, St. Francis, while he was praying, God appeared to him in this crucifix

and said to him, Francis, go repair my house, which as you can see, is fallen into ruins.

Now, St. Francis looked around the chapel that he was in that was all falling apart,

and he thought God was telling him to rebuild this church. So he decided to do that. He went,

he stole some cloth from his father, and sold it for gold so that he might buy stones to rebuild

the chapel. Well, as you might guess, that didn't have, that didn't go over so well.

His father was very upset. He was forced to repay his father and go to court. Well in court,

St. Francis renounced his father, renounced all of his wealth, and took on the robe of a beggar.

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