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

Hey there, Spouts.

Today is Thursday, June 16th, 2020.

Today is also the feast day of St. Ludgardis of Belgium.

Now, this week, we have been talking about great saints that have their feast days during the month of June. We've already

talked about St. Anthony and Padua, St. Charles Luonga, and the Ugandan martyrs. And yesterday we

spoke about St. Thomas More. Today, we are talking about the patron of today, St. Ludgardis

of Belgium. She lived in the late 1,100s, early 1,200s, and she has a very interesting story.

So St. Lugardis, she was actually born to a rather poor family, and through bad financial

decisions, her parents lost her dowry money.

Now, dowry is the amount that during this time,

a family that had a daughter, they would pay that money to the family of the man that she would be marrying because it was thought that this family would almost take this person in and take care of them,

so they had to have money to go along with the bride. But unfortunately, Luttgartas family had

lost her dowry. So with no other options, they thought either she was going to starve,

or we can send her to a convent. So they sent her to a convent when she was 11 years old.

Now, she describes herself as sort of a silly girl. She was sort of there like living in a hotel.

She wasn't really taking part in the prayers. And she was still very interested in silly things,

like friends and entertainment and fancy food. And so one

day, a couple years after she started living at the convent, she was in her room entertaining a

friend when all of a sudden she had a vision of Jesus Christ.

Jesus appeared to her in this room.

He showed her his wounds on his hands, his feet, and his side.

...