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Catholic Sprouts,

the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, sprouts. Today is Tuesday, September 5th, 2003. Today is also the feast day of our patron saint of the Be a St.

Kids Club this month, St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Mother Teresa of Calcutta is one of the most famous saints that we have as Catholics. She's also a modern saint. She died a little over 20 years ago in 1997. So very likely your parents were alive when she was alive. And she offers us all so much inspiration and a challenge

in how we respond to particularly the poorest, the weakest, the most forgotten members of this

world. So a little bit about St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She was born in 1910 in Albania, when she was only nine years old, her father died. And before she became Mother Teresa, the name she was given at birth was Agnes. From a very young age, her mother taught her about Jesus. And one of the simplest, but most

transformative lessons that her mother taught her was that the whole gospel can be summed up

in just five words. And so she would have little Agnes, who became Mother Teresa,

hold out her hand. And on each of her fingers, she would put a word.

And that small sentence was, you did it for me. You did it for me. Now, this sentence comes from the

gospel of Matthew in chapter 25, when all of the nations are standing for

Jesus as he sits on the throne as the true king of the universe judging people based on the lives

that they have lived and when people ask you know Lord when did I feed you when did I visit you in

prison when did I clothe you and he said whenever you in prison? When did I clothe you? And he said,

whenever you did it for one of the weakest, the smallest of my people, you did it for me.

And so that was the philosophy that Mother Teresa lived her life by. When she was a young woman,

she felt called to religious life. She left

Albania, moved to England, where she went through formation and learned English. In 1928,

she left and moved to Calcutta, India, where she served as a teacher for 20 years. Then in

1948, she received what she called a call within a call. She was on a

train, praying when she had a mystical experience where Christ called her to something more,

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