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

Hey there, sprouts. Today is Monday, December 2, 2019. It is also the beginning of the first week of Advent.

This week on the Catholic Spouts podcast, we are going to start in on the Jesse Tree. Now, we're going to be doing this a little bit different. We're not going to start in on the Jesse Tree.

Now, we're going to be doing this a little bit different.

We're not going to be covering every character that you will be reading about in your home Jesse Tree, but we are going to be talking primarily about the prophets.

But before we start that, we are going to spend today and tomorrow talking about Advent,

because we have entered a brand new liturgical season and also a brand new liturgical year.

That's right.

The liturgical year started new yesterday on the first Sunday of Advent.

So happy New Year.

Now let's talk a little bit about Advent in case you don't quite know what this season is all about.

Well, Advent is, of course, the four weeks leading up to Christmas.

We count down these weeks by lighting candles. Hopefully in your church,

they have a big wreath out with four big candles. There are four of them. Traditionally, three are

purple and one is pink. We light the pink one on the third week,

kind of as a little bit of hope and joy.

We're getting close.

We're almost there.

So we light a candle each week.

Now there's other symbols that we associate with Advent

besides just the wreath and the candles.

Advent is primarily a season of waiting.

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