You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for September 24th, 2020. Today is also another great

Marian feast day. Today is the feast day of Our Lady of Mercy. Now, my challenge for you today, and I'll remind you at the end,

is to find a miraculous medal, either the real metal or just an image of that picture. Now,

this image helps us understand what Our Lady of Mercy is, what this title tells us about Mary.

On the miraculous medal, we see Mary standing on top of the earth,

and from each of her hands, which are sort of spread out at her sides,

there are rays of light shooting forth.

Now, this is her mercy and her grace coming down to flood the whole world.

But she told St. Catherine LeBore, who she appeared to and gave this image of the miraculous

meadow, that there is much mercy and grace that she is more than happy to send into the

world that is not received. Mary is like a mirror. God shines his

grace and mercy upon her, and all she wants to do is reflect it and shine it back at us. But are we

open to it? Are we willing to receive it? Those are the questions. So as you look at those

rays coming off of the fingers of our blessed mother in the image of the miraculous medal,

wonder, how can I be more open to God's mercy and God's grace that comes flooding into this world through our Lady of Mercy,

our blessed Mother Mary.

So, Sprouts, this week we have been talking about the world that Jesus lived in.

We talked about that he was a real person that lived at a real time.

We talked about the nature of the Roman emperor.

We did the quickest overview of Jewish history ever.

And today we're going to talk about what happened when these two cultures met.

When the Romans came and conquered the Jews and actually some other people came and conquered

...