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

Hey there, Sprouds. Today is Tuesday, April 9th, 2019, and we are still in the fifth week of Lent.

This week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast, we are continuing to look at Jesus Christ, our great

teacher and example, specifically looking at what he teaches us about prayer. Yesterday, we talked about

how prayer is simply coming into the presence of God, and we can do that in lots of small or big

ways every single day. We also talked about how Jesus shows us that we need to pray first, not last once things have gotten a little bit out of control, but first.

Today, we are going to talk about the prayer that Jesus taught us.

As you probably know, at a certain point in his public ministry, the close followers of Jesus Christ

asked him to teach them to pray. In response, Jesus gave them a beautiful prayer. He gave them

the Our Father. Now, as you can read in a couple of different gospel accounts, particularly in the sixth chapter of Matthew, the prayer that Jesus gave to his disciples was written down in the gospels.

And it is the exact same prayer that we say each time we attend mass and that we say repeatedly each time we say the

rosary. It is the exact same prayer. Now, Sprouts, let's just stop right there for a minute and think

about that. Jesus lived a long time ago. And not only that, he was truly God, made man who

lived on earth. He gave his disciples something really amazing, a prayer, a perfect prayer.

And we are able to say those same words today.

So whenever you say the Our Father, you should be amazed and marvel at the fact that this prayer came directly from God.

It is a good and beautiful prayer.

And there's a lot that we could say about the specifics of the Our Father,

but I want you to think about something even broader right now. Now, a lot of Christians believe

that it is better to speak from the heart when you pray, or at least that it's better to do that

than to simply use recited prayers.

By recited prayers, I mean prayers that we have learned, memorized, and say oftentimes repeatedly.

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