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

Hey there, Sprouse.

Today is Friday, November 29th, 2019.

This week on the Catholic Sprouds podcast, we have been wrapping up our walk through the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.

We are talking about the tip top of the ladder,

the top of the mountain. We are talking about wisdom. We've already talked about how wisdom is like

standing on the top of a mountain with God and looking down on the earth through his eyes.

We acknowledge that God is the uncaused cause. He is the beginning of everything. We also talked

about how the opposite of wisdom is foolishness, a foolishness that keeps us attached to this world and not

our eyes on heaven. Yesterday, through the example of St. Catherine LeBois, we looked at the miraculous medal,

which is such an incredible gift from Mary.

And today, we are going to look at the ultimate saintly example of wisdom, and that is St. Thomas Aquinas.

So St. Thomas Aquinas was Italian, and he lived a long time ago. He lived during the time of

castles and knights, and he was born to a very wealthy family. But St. Thomas, from an early

age, was devoted to God, and he knew that he wanted to devote his life to being a priest and a monk,

studying and thinking about God. So he was determined to join the Dominican order. Now,

the Dominicans lived a vow of poverty. They were founded by St. Dominic, and they lived in monasteries. They would leave their families,

basically renounce all of their possessions and their titles, and go and live in monasteries.

Dominicans were also known as a preaching order. They studied, but then they also went out into the

world, and they taught. They taught about God,

and they were particularly instrumental in spreading the rosary. So St. Thomas was determined to go and

become a Franciscan, but his family did not like this idea at all, particularly his mother didn't like it. St. Thomas, she thought,

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