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

Hey there, Spouts. Today is Tuesday, August 6th, 2019, and it is also the feast day of the Transfiguration.

This week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast, we are exploring our mission statement here, which is letting the Eucharist lead.

Yesterday, we envisioned ourselves as part of a great eucharistic procession that will be our way of life. Today, we are going to talk about the first

and the most common way that we encounter the Eucharist, which is through the sacrifice of the mass.

But before we get there, I want to introduce you to someone.

Now, there is a man named Cardinal Van Thuane.

He lives in Vietnam, and he is quite a bit older than you.

In fact, Cardinal Van Thuane spent 13 of his years of his life

in prison. During the 1970s, there was a war in Vietnam, and a certain group of people called

the Communists took over, and they despised religion. They especially hated the Catholic Church.

So Cardinal Van Thuane, as a leader of the Catholic Church, was imprisoned for 13 years.

And listen, for nine years, nine full years, he was in solitary confinement.

That simply means that he was locked in a tiny room all by himself.

He only had contact with two guards during that whole time. So think about that. Think about how old you are and how long nine years is.

Now, the reason I talk about Cardinal Van Thuane, or we'll talk about him as Cardinal Francis today, is because of the Eucharist.

Now, while he was in jail, he sent message to people on the outside for some essential supplies that he needed.

And they sent him a little bit of wine and some Eucharistic bread concealed in a flashlight.

For the nine years that he was in prison, all by himself, Cardinal Van Thuane was able to practice or to say Mass every single day.

He simply would put a couple drops of wine in the palm of his hand and mix it with water just as the priest does at mass.

He also took a tiny bit of the host that had been smuggled into him inside of a flashlight.

And through that, even though he wasn't in a church, even though he was all alone, even though he didn't have any fancy gold chalice or altar, he, because he was a priest, was able to say mass. And through that, Jesus in the Eucharist,

...