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Catholic sprouts

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

Hey there, sprouts, Today is Wednesday, June 5th,

2004. Today is also the feast day of St. Boniface of Germany. St. Boniface is a really incredible saint. He is known as the apostle of Germany because he was actually

from England, but after he answered the call to religious life, he wanted to become a missionary.

He begged the Pope to send him to Germany. He went there, but at the time, roving armies and

tribes were there fighting and killing each other so much that he had to leave.

But he went back a few years later.

And one of the most memorable things that St. Boniface did is that he cut down a tree.

Might not sound very dramatic, but here's what happened.

So in Germany at the time, the people were

pagan, which meant that they worshipped various gods, but they also worshipped nature.

And at the center of this worship was a huge oak tree. They thought that the tree was divine

or connected to the vine, something like that. Anyway,

at the time that St. Boniface arrived in this region, a strong tribal leader had just died.

So St. Boniface saw this as an opportunity to really take control of these wild people and introduce them to Jesus.

So what he did is he got an axe and he cut down that sacred oak tree.

Now, you can imagine people are standing around with their mouths open.

What's going to happen?

Is he going to get struck by lightning? Are we all going to die?

But guess what happened? Nothing. Nothing happened. It was just a tree. And once the tree was cut down and they saw that all

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