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 10th day in the 12th month in the year of our Lord 2022. My name is Sir Roland Paterlaught, and you're listening to Saturdays with Sir

Roland on Catholic Sprouts where every Saturday we discuss the art of dragon slain. The last three weeks we've been discussing the orange dragon of Envidia.

We talked about how this dragon tempts you to envy, making you feel sorrow when others do good or glad when others fail.

We talked about St. Joseph, a simple, humble carpenter.

He taught us that each and every one of us is God's masterpiece, and we all have a unique

role to play if we allow God to work in our lives. Last week, we learned about the virtue of

admiration, which is the ability to see God's creativity not only in ourselves, but in others,

and to celebrate each person as a true miracle from God. We don't have to compete for God's love

or compare ourselves to others as invidia tempts us to do.

But let's be honest, this dragon is relentless and has wounded each and every one of us.

I've been dragons signed for decades now, and you would think that I would have these dragons mastered.

But alas, the dragons constantly think of new ways to trip me up, as well as use the same strategies that have worked on me over and over.

Most of the time we listen to dragons because they offer us some kind of reward or pleasure that we just can't resist.

The temptation is just too strong.

But invidia really has no reward.

Being envious of others brings no reward, no consolation, no pleasure, and no instant gratification.

It makes us miserable from the start, and we know it. And yet, we all struggle with this dragon.

We just can't seem to help comparing ourselves to others. Feeling a tinge of sadness when somebody is faster, prettier, smarter, taller,

richer, stronger, luckier, more talented, or more successful. So why do we fall for this dragon's

lies and how can we protect ourselves from it? Well, in his letter, St. Joseph reminded us of the

dragon slain Maxim which said, to kill the fruit of the dragon, you must get to the root of the dragon.

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