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

Hey there, Spouts. Today is Wednesday, December 26, 2018. It is also the feast day of St. Stephen

the martyr. And of course, we are still celebrating Christmas. Today on the Catholic

Sprouts podcast, we are going to talk about St. Stephen.

Now, first of all, here is a little bit about St. Stephen.

So St. Stephen was an early, early Christian.

He knew Jesus, and he was outspreading the faith very shortly after Jesus ascended into heaven. St. Stephen was very brave, and we need to

remember that the early Christians did not have it easy. Many of the Jews did not like what the

Christians were doing, especially when they were trying to spread the faith about Jesus Christ.

Because remember, what did the Jewish

leaders do to Jesus? Well, they crucified him. And so anyone that was spreading around the faith

proclaiming that Jesus had risen from the dead and that he was in fact the Messiah, well, they

clearly wouldn't have liked that. But St. Stephen was brave.

He knew that the faith was worth spreading, even if it endangered his life. And he did that.

St. Stephen, however, was martyred. Now, do you know what the word martyred means? Well, it means that he was killed for his faith.

St. Stephen was put to death because he was spreading the good news about Jesus Christ and because

he refused to give up his faith. In fact, St. Stephen was killed in a very brutal way. He was stoned to death, which means that people there took stones and threw them at him until he died. Now, this is a horrible and dark story to talk about, especially when yesterday we were just talking about Christmas. So now why in the world did our church

make the day after Christmas the feast day of a martyr? In fact, Stephen is seen as the first

martyr of the Christian faith. He lived, like I said, shortly after Jesus had ascended into

heaven, and he was the first one put to death for his faith. As we know, there have been countless

people that have followed St. Stephen and also lost their lives for their faith, but he was the first

one. So why do we talk about Stephen

...