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

Hey there, sprouts. Today is Wednesday, November 13th, 2019. This week on the Catholic Spouts podcast, we are talking about counsel, the fifth gift of the Holy Spirit. We've already talked

about how the gift of counsel can come directly

from God when answer to those questions we might have about how to live out the faith or how

to live out these gifts of the Holy Spirit that we have already received. Yesterday we talked about

the sacrament of confession and how oftentimes confession is a great

opportunity to receive counsel from our priests directly.

Now, today is the feast of a great saint.

Today is the feast day of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini.

And through her, through this little Italian immigrant who was a nun and founded in order and did

incredible things, we can see a powerful example of counsel, of how God might choose to speak to

us through other people and how it is our duty to answer and respect his message through other people,

even if it isn't exactly what we were hoping to hear.

So counsel is the gift of the Holy Spirit that tells us what to do,

and therefore counsel is really the gift of getting things done.

It is how God reveals specifically how we will do

his will. And so let's look at St. Francis Xavier Cabrini's life for an example of this.

Now, as I mentioned, St. Francis Xavier Cabrini lived in the United States, but she was born in Italy.

In fact, she was born two months early, so she was very sickly when she was little. These days, we have amazing technology,

and babies born early grow up and be healthy and happy and completely the same as everyone else.

But long ago, when she lived, if you were born early,

you oftentimes had health problems your whole life.

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