You're listening to

Catholic sprouts

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

Hey there, sproutsouts. Today is Wednesday, July 24th, 2024. Today is also the feast day of a very interesting saint who lived during the 11 and 1200s in what is now Belgium. Her name is Christina the astonishing.

Christina the astonishing was the daughter of poor peasants. Her parents died when she was young.

And when she was 20, she suddenly died. Yeah, she died. So her sisters got together. They were at the

funeral mass a couple of days later when suddenly Christina sat up. Everyone in the church screamed,

as you can imagine. And Christina was so frightened that she jumped out of her coffin and flew up to the ceiling.

In fact, she finally rested on one of the rafters of the church.

Everyone ran away except for the priests and her sisters.

And when she was finally able to come down, she revealed that after her death, God took her on a tour

of heaven, hell, and purgatory. And in each of these places, she saw people she knew and loved.

Then God gave her the option to come back to this world and to live the rest of her life doing

penance for those who were suffering in purgatory so that they might find comfort and reach

heaven sooner. Christina took that. She came back to the world and she lived the rest of her

life doing the most insane penances for people who

were suffering in purgatory. In fact, many of the things that she did, she probably should

not have survived. She also worked many miracles. She lived a very holy and prayerful life,

and she became a religious sister. Now, what's really interesting about the

story of Christina the astonishing is that at the time of her life, people were beginning to doubt

purgatory. They were beginning to think, you know, that's just, I don't know, there's no,

there's no real proof, you know, how do we know that that's real?

...