You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast, 2019. It is also the feast day of a great saint.

Today is the feast day of Pope St. John Paul II. Now, you probably know about Pope St. John Paul

the second. He is a modern saint. Chances are he was alive during the lifetime of your parents,

or maybe even your lifetime, depending on how old you are. He was a Polish man who answered a call

to the priesthood, became a bishop, an archbishop,

and at the surprise to nearly everyone, he was named Pope.

He served as Pope for many years.

He visited many countries.

He gave us the luminous mysteries of the rosary, and above all, he depended on saying his

daily rosary and his close, intimate relationship with the Holy Mother of God, Mary. So please

remember to pray through the intercession of Pope St. John Paul the Great today.

He is a powerful intercessor and he is our Holy Father still who cares very much about every member of this church.

Now this week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast, we are talking about the second gift of the

Holy Spirit, which is piety. We've already talked about how piety, to understand this, we need to

keep the singular concept of family in our minds. In the Old Testament, we knew God as Yahweh, or I am, the all-powerful,

ever-living God. In the New Testament, Jesus teaches us to refer to God as our father.

And it is this concept of fatherhood that lays the groundwork for everything that the gift of piety

contains. So we're going to talk about three elements of family found in the gift of piety this

week. We'll talk about the first one today, which is God as Father.

Tomorrow, we're going to talk about how we need to be holy children of God.

And then the day after that, we will talk about how the gift of piety helps us to see everyone as brothers and sisters.

So today, let's talk about this concept of seeing God as the father.

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