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

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Wednesday, October 17th. It is also the feast day of St. Ignatius of Antioch.

This week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast, we have been talking about what it actually means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

On Monday, we looked at the example of St. Teresa of Avala, who worked in her time to reform the entire Carmelite order.

And we learned from her that in order to be a follower of Jesus,

we need to do His work.

Yesterday, we studied St. Margaret Mary Aliqui, a French mystic nun.

From her apparitions and the message of the sacred heart that she received from Jesus Christ,

we learned that in order to be Jesus' follower, we need to receive his love and give

him all of our love in return. Today, we are going to look at the example of St. Ignatius of Antioch

to discover yet another truth about what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

And here is the truth we are going to learn from him.

We are going to learn that in order to be Jesus' follower,

we need to be willing to give up everything.

Now, St. Ignatius of Antioch lived a long time ago.

In fact, he was born nearly 2,000 years ago.

It is a tradition that St. Ignatius of Antioch is one of the children that Jesus took on to his lap while teaching his disciples

about what true holiness is. So St. Ignatius of Antioch lived a long time ago, and he was part of the

early church. Now, as you know, early Christians did not have it very easy. There were many

people that were trying to get rid of the Christians. The Jews did not like the Christians,

because after all, they had crucified Jesus. And when the Christians tried to spread the gospel

into other regions of the world, where Gentiles lived, they weren't welcome there either.

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