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

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Tuesday, August 30th, 2020. Today is also the feast day of an English saint named St. Margaret Ward. Now, St. Margaret Ward lived in the 1500s during the Reformation when lots of countries,

including England, were breaking away from the Catholic Church and forming Protestant denominations.

Margaret Ward was a mother who smuggled a rope to a man named Father Richard Watson. He was a priest who would not abandon the Catholic

faith. He used the rope then to escape prison and to go out and to continue to say mass for the

faithful. St. Margaret Ward was found guilty of this and refused to tell the authorities where the

priest was hiding. And she ended up being a martyr

for the faith, along with many other faithful people in England during this time.

Now, this week we are talking about how we get to heaven, how we become saints.

And Jesus laid this out for us in the gospel. The first step was

publicly proclaimed both by Jesus and his cousin, St. John the Baptist, and this first step is to

repent, to look back on our lives and see how we have failed and have a true desire, deep desire,

to do better, to start new and to live for Jesus.

Now, the second step to have faith is super duper, duper, duper important.

Jesus, almost every time he worked a miracle, he says, your faith has saved you. Your faith has healed you. Now, you should stop and think that's pretty

strange because when you just hear about the miracles, you think, well, it's Jesus. He's God. He's the one that's

healed me. But he says something different. He says your faith has

healed you. Now, of course we know that God is God. He is the Almighty because he created all things.

Our human body and the oceans and weather, all things obey his commands. Even death obeys his command. He rose people from the dead.

And yet, when he heals people, he says, your faith has healed you. Now, this leads us to understand

that it is our faith that allows Jesus to act in our lives.

Remember, the first step is to repent.

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