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

Hey there, Sprouts.

Today is Friday, June 10th, 2020.

This week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast, we are enjoying getting into summer with the patron saints of summer.

We've already talked about the patron saint of beaches and swimming,

of good weather, of grilling, of travel, and fireworks. And this day we're going to end with what I feel is an essential part of summer, and that is ice cream. That's right. We have a patron saint

of ice cream. The patron saint of ice cream is St. Ludwina. St. Luwina. She lived in Holland

during the 1300s. Now, as you can probably guess from hearing all the stories this week, sometimes it's just

sort of strange parts of a saint's biography that make them a patron saint of that thing.

So I think we can rest assured the St. Luena did not spend her whole life laying around eating ice cream. Instead, she was a daughter of a poor family, a very poor family in Holland. And unfortunately, when she was 15, she was out skating on a pond with her sisters.

Unfortunately, she slipped, she fell, and she broke her rib.

Now, you might not think that that would totally change her life forever, but it did.

Because medicine was not as advanced then.

Her rib never really healed, and she developed all sorts of other terrible medical issues around this. For the rest of her life, she lived with terrible, terrible pain. For a long time, the members of her community thought that maybe she was possessed. Why wasn't she getting better? Why wasn't she leaving bed? But they realized that actually she was a very holy person. And as she sat in bed suffering for years and years, she saw many visions of both Jesus and Mary. Eventually, people would come to her

and ask for her prayers, and through her prayers, many miracles were granted. She saw visions for people.

She even, in fact, saw a vision of her own death. And by the time of her death, she was venerated as a living

saint. Since that time of her death, many miracles have been procured through her intercession.

And so that's right, St. Ludwina, who is very poor and suffered and probably never enjoyed ice cream in her life,

is nevertheless the patron saint of ice cream. Therefore, Spruits, I challenge you to have some

ice cream this summer. But as you have ice cream, let's remember St. Ludwina. let's remember to just place all of our trust in

Jesus Christ to cling to him even when we are suffering and to trust that all the suffering in our

life will bring us closer to him now I pray that you have a blessed summer, that you have

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