You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Monday, April 8th, 2019, and we are in the fifth week of Lent.

This week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast, we are going to continue to look closely at Jesus Christ, our guide, and teacher.

We have already looked at his parables, his miracles,

his calling of people to follow him and his early years. This week, we are going to look closely

at what Jesus teaches us about prayer. Now, there is a lot to learn about prayer simply by looking at the way Jesus

prayed, the things he used to pray, the way he taught prayer. There is a lot to learn there.

Now, unfortunately, prayer can be a little bit mysterious or even intimidating, not only for children, but for adults too. We know that prayer is so,

so important. We know that it is the only way to get to know God, the only way to advance in

holiness and the spiritual life, and yet we don't really know what prayer is.

This is because a lot of us make prayer more complicated than it is.

Prayer is, of course, something that we do as a community at the sacrifice of the Mass,

but it is also something that we are called to do individually

every day and even often every day. So what the heck is prayer? Well, prayer is actually very simple.

Prayer means simply coming into the presence of God.

That's simply what it means, coming into the presence of God.

Now, we can do this in big ways by going to adoration and standing before Jesus Christ truly present in the Eucharist, which we honor and venerate in adoration. But we can also do it in small

ways. When we're walking to school in the quiet, we can simply say the name of Jesus Christ,

know that he hears us, that he hears the longing of our hearts, and just simply imagine that he's walking next to us. Or we can do it

in an even simpler way. When we don't have the words to say, we can simply rely on the beautiful

words of the Our Father, which Jesus gave us, and as we say it, just really picture ourselves speaking to God. All of these things are prayer

and so many more things are prayer. So we're going to spend this week talking about how Jesus prayed

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