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

Greetings young Squire Sprouts.

Today is the 18th day in the sixth month in the year of our Lord 2022.

My name is Sir Roland Paterlot, and you're listening to Saturdays with Sir Roland on Catholic Spouts.

For every Saturday we discuss the art of dragon slaying.

Young Squire Sprouts last week we started a discussion on the topic of sports, and we talked about self-discipline. This week, I want to focus on the P in the word sports, which stands for

perseverance and passion. Perseverance is key to being a great dragon slayer. In the race of life,

we're not really running a sprint, we're running a marathon. It's a long, long race. Do you guys

know how long, how far a marathon is? It's 26.2 miles. And I know this because I've done a couple marathons. I did my first marathon back in

2010 and I remember at the end of the race thinking to myself, this is awful. I'm never doing this

again. And then you know what I did the very next year? I ran another marathon because something

inside of me told me that this was actually good for me.

This pushed me. This challenged me. If we read the book of Syrac in the Bible in chapter two,

it actually says, if you want to follow God, if you want to follow the Lord, then prepare yourself for a

trial that gold is tested in the fire and that life is hard. You know, during that marathon,

there's ups and downs. There's sometimes where I felt like I could fly. I was feeling so good.

And there's other times where I felt like, man, I can't take another step. Sometimes you're

going uphill. Sometimes you're going downhill. Sometimes the wind's in your face, sometimes the wind is at your back.

And that is life with its peaks and valleys. And we have to be willing to persevere even through the

challenging times. You know, one of the best basketball players that ever lived, Michael Jordan,

he once said, I missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I lost more than 300 games.

26 times they trusted me to take the game-winning shot and I missed in my life and in my career.

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