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

Hey there, Spruz.

Today is Tuesday, June 21st, 2022.

This week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast, we are talking about Jesus' Sacred Heart,

which we will be celebrating on the feastast of the Sacred Heart this coming Friday.

Yesterday we started with the heart of Jesus as we talked through all of the elements of the sacred heart image.

And today we are going to talk about the fire.

Now, if you haven't yet, pause right now and take a look at an image of the sacred heart.

They're very easy to find online.

You're going to notice that this is a heart, but coming out the top of it is fire.

There's fire burning out the top of it.

And this is an important symbol.

First of all, because fire oftentimes has been used to symbolize God. There are three key times in the Old Testament where God is symbolized by fire.

The first one is when God appeared to Moses. Do you remember how he appeared? He appeared as a burning bush, right? But the fire was not consuming the bush. And yet God was here in this fire. The next place that God is shown through fire is after Moses goes back to Egypt, he's leading the Israelites

out into the wilderness and the Egyptians follow them. And God stands between the Israelites and

the Egyptians as a pillar of fire. That is how he protects them. The final time is generations later,

when the Israelites kings have been very corrupt, they're worshipping false gods. And the prophet

Elijah, he is called to come and call out these worshippers of especially a very violent god named Baal.

So all of the priests of this false god assemble, Elijah challenges them and says, build an altar, the first one to call down fire from heaven by their God.

Then, you know, this is the true God.

And so, of course, these priests of the false God, they do all their praying and chanting,

but Bail's not real. He's made up. So does fire come down from heaven? Nope.

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