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Catholic sprouts.

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

Hey there, Spouts.

Today is Tuesday, August 27th, 2024.

Today is also the feast day of St. Monica.

St. Monica had a very famous son, St. Augustine, but she was holy in her own right, and St. Guston's a feast day.

His feast day is tomorrow. Today is his mom's feast day. And if St. Augustine was here, he would want

us to talk about his mother. Now, St. Monica was born a Christian. She lived in northern Africa in the late 300th, and this is right

after Christianity has become legal. It is becoming the religion of the Roman Empire, but still

many people are pagan, including her mother-in-law, her husband, and her children. And so St. Monica was the only Christian in her family

for a long time, despite a very active prayer life and deep devotion to the church. Now, through it all,

she shed many tears, but she also was diligent in prayer, diligent. And before she died, her mother-in-law, her husband,

and then finally her son, St. Augustine, converted. Monica had the privilege of being present

at St. Augustine's baptism, and he was baptized when he was 30 years old. So you know,

she prayed for those 30 years. And she's a great reminder to us that if there are people in our

lives that we love, that are living in a way that we know is harmful, if they're trapped in

sin, or if they simply don't know Jesus, that we can and we should

evangelize to them, but we also can always pray for them. We can pray diligently. And as St. Monica's

spiritual director told her at one point when she was just so devastated that St. Augustine was

still not a Christian. He said that God would not ignore all of the tears that she had shed

for her son because the love of a mother is very powerful. Now this week on the Catholic

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